Posted on April 25, 2016 by Mirela Iverac in The Guardian The Guardian, By Mirela Iverac In late December, three days after Christmas, Shakira Crawford left her three children with her neighbor at a homeless shelter in East New York and rushed into the night to look at an apartment. “I’m excited,” she said, exuding her usual cheerfulness, despite the near-freezing temperature. Crawford, 40, spent most of 2015 looking for a way out of a homeless shelter with a $1,500 subsidy from the city. She works full time as a lobby attendant at a Midtown hotel, and she makes $17,000 a year. She got in touch with 60 brokers, but never got a lease.