This post was originally featured on HuffingtonPost.com It might not come as a surprise, but it’s deeply troubling nonetheless. Our city’s recent push towards a more comprehensive assessment of the homeless population has provided the latest set of results and they are far from positive. The survey from the Homeless Outreach Population Estimate (HOPE) has the [...]
This post was originally featured on HuffingtonPost.com We often think of homelessness as a local issue, but it can be easy to forget that just about every country has a homeless problem of its own, with a number of different potential solutions. While serving a homeless population affects localities most immediately, this problem extends into every nation [...]
This post was originally featured on HuffingtonPost.com It’s a little-known fact that the City of New York is legally obliged to provide housing for those without it, but with the explosion in the city’s homeless population, you’d be forgiven for not knowing that. The number of people staying in shelters in New York City has grown by over 10,000 [...]
This post was originally featured on HuffingtonPost.com In general, our country is seeing a decline in homelessness, but it’s still way too early to begin patting ourselves on the back for a job well done. From 2015 to 2016, the homeless population decreased by 3%, although that statistic is complicated by the fact that there [...]
The GDP of America is an astronomical $18 trillion. To put it in perspective, if California seceded from the United States, it would have the eighth largest GDP of all the countries in the world (just beating out Italy). When you start to consider just how much money exists in America, it makes the fact [...]
A question I hear a lot when I’m talking about homelessness in New York, is: “why don’t the homeless just stay in shelters?” It is more complex than many New Yorkers imagine–both the problems and the purported solutions. For me, the more important question is: ‘why shelters at all?’ As someone who has spent a [...]
New York City is famous the world over for its glitz and glamour, featured in all sorts of popular entertainment from movies to television shows. Yet not all that glitters is gold. Life in paradise is much harder than one may think. In fact, many New Yorkers are one paycheck away from homelessness, forced into a monthly catch-22--a cycle causing of perpetual anxiety.
This post was originally featured on HuffingtonPost.com Paramedics and EMTs have a lot of exposure to people living on the streets. Some are hardened by these experiences, but I don’t know a single EMT who hasn’t been forever changed. As a volunteer EMT myself, I have seen far too many homeless people die from the [...]
As a real estate developer and a volunteer EMT, I see things other developers don’t get to see: that the homeless people dying in the streets aren’t invisible. To me, the homeless aren’t a “problem”, they’re a product of a bigger issue, one that NYC hasn’t begun to figure out how to solve. Because New [...]
NYC Public School kids return to their classrooms on September 8. Generally, back to school time is filled with both sadness of summer coming to an end, and excitement regarding the start of a new chapter and connecting with friends. Yet for some of New York’s most vulnerable groups, those living with extreme poverty, returning [...]