Finding shelter for New York City’s homeless is a bureaucratic nightmare

On a frigid Wednesday morning in March, Marg Curran scanned the streets of East Harlem through the windows of a Toyota Rav4. Curran and Alexandra Long, in the passenger seat, kept an eye out for tents, electric-blue tarps draped over discarded furniture, shopping carts loaded with clothes—things that might indicate a homeless person was staying nearby.