Posted on April 4, 2016 by Jacquelyn Simone in City & State City & State, By Frank G. Runyeon Robert Negron, 60, has been shuttled between more nursing homes than he can remember – at least six and perhaps as many as 20 – before landing in his current bed at Beth Abraham Health Services in the Bronx. The instability has been wearing on Negron, a Crohn’s disease patient who uses a wheelchair and needs regular attention for an unhealed wound on his foot and chronic skin ulcers – but it’s still better than being in a homeless shelter, he would say. “In the shelters it’s dirty, it’s nasty. You could not get enough medical attention and lose a limb,” Negron said, explaining how the unsanitary conditions at the men’s shelters on Ward’s Island, over the 10 years he occasionally stayed there,put him at risk. Although he visited a clinic for care and did the best he could to change his own bandages, “There were times when my foot was really bad,” he said. A New York City Human Resources Administration spokesman said that since Negron’s stay, “substantial improvements” have been made at that shelter.
