From Poverty to Homelessness: Recession Hits New Yorkers Hard

Carmen Ortiz found her waitressing job just in time. It was early 2008; both her parents had recently died in a car accident, and the father of her children had been sent to jail for dealing drugs, leaving her with no income to support her two kids. When she started waiting tables on January 18 of that year, she was grateful just to be working.

So she was devastated when the New Jersey diner where she was working closed due to the economic recession. Within weeks, she and her children were homeless.

The recession has been hard on many New Yorkers, but it has been particularly painful for the people who hover near homelessness or cross the line into that population. The number of families entering New York City’s homeless shelters jumped 31 percent between January 2002 and September 2008, according to data cited by the Coalition for the Homeless.

Even before she found herself without a home, Carmen Ortiz had been dealing with poverty for years. She arrived in New York with her parents when she was a very young girl from Panama. Like many other immigrants, her parents were poor and were seeking a better life in the United States.

Carmen dropped out of high school after she became infatuated with a boy named Antonio who was both a drug addict and drug seller. Carmen had two children with him. Her daughter is four years old and her son is three years old. Even though they had a source of income—Antonio’s drug selling—their lives were difficult due to regular abuse by Antonio.

He was later caught selling drugs and was sent to a New York county jail. Carmen went to a homeless shelter for a while since her only source of income was gone. Without a high school diploma, she was unable to find work, despite a prolonged job search.

Times were tough, and during one of the weeks of her job search, both her parents died in a car accident. Fortunately, she eventually found a job as a waitress at a diner. Since Carmen could not afford a babysitter, she took her children with her to work. Carmen was able to make enough money to support herself and her children as well receive classes to finish her high school education and receive a diploma.

Everything was going well for Carmen until the recession hit its hardest. The diner shut down and Carmen lost her job. She is now 20 years old and lives in the Saratoga Inn, a homeless shelter at JFK Airport in Queens, where she and her children continue to struggle. Carmen remains hopeful: “Even though it’s tough I have hope that one day we will get out of this recession and life will get better again.”

Jahaira Soto also lives in the Saratoga Inn at JFK Airport in Queens with her two children. The father of the children was abusive to her so she had to leave the house with only her children and nothing but the clothes on their backs. She has been living in the shelter for seven months.

Jahaira is now 23 years old. She receives some money from public assistance, but has had difficulty finding a job.

She tried to work at a McDonald’s near her home in Brooklyn, but could not afford a babysitter for her children. The money and food stamps she receives only last so long, especially with a one-year-old daughter and a four-year-old daughter for whom she must buy Pampers and other baby products.

Jahaira is unable to receive support from her family or the family of the children’s father. “All I want is to get a good job and make a good life for my children,” she said.

In June 2004, Mayor Michael Bloomberg unveiled his plan to decrease homelessness by two-thirds. However, instead of declining, the number of homeless families actually grew by 826 families after five years, and there are 5,000 more homeless New Yorkers in shelters than when Bloomberg took office.

The Coalition for the Homeless is one of the organizations working to solve this problem. It has an eviction-prevention program, but due to the increase in evictions over the past couple of months, several families have lost their homes. The fact that homeless shelters are more expensive than permanent homes has increased the burden on the organization.

“It just becomes more difficult to deal with as this recession continues. We have created several programs to allow people to get back on their feet, but there is only so much we can do,” said Patrick Markee, senior policy analyst at the Coalition, One of those programs includes training homeless people to get jobs and be able to support themselves and their families.

Homeless shelters are struggling to keep up with the influx of new clients. Alice Foster, a volunteer at the Saratoga Inn, said, “It is difficult to deal with more people. They just keep coming, and getting enough food needed for them all is difficult.”

Due to the increase in homeless people, there is a chance that shelters will run out space. “I see new people come in about every two to three weeks and this place is starting to get filled in,” said a homeless man named Simon Wilson, at the Springfield Family Inn in Jamaica, Queens.

His observations were echoed by volunteer Diana Penn, who has been working at the Springfield Inn for three and a half years. “I saw a family of four—the parents, with the mother holding a girl of four years, and a daughter of seven years holding the father’s hand—walk in exhausted and filthy. It is an extremely heart wrenching sight and it makes you appreciate what you have,” she said.