Our Spring Walk is scheduled for 6/13/2021. Please join us!

The Sleeping Bag Program Spring Walk, 6/13/2021

While raising needed funds to assist the homeless, we will be walking along some very historic steps in the history of Brooklyn, based upon the Battle of Long Island renamed the Battle of Brooklyn took place on between August 27 & August 29 1776 and was the first official battle of the revolutionary war of the new nation. Join us @ 9am for all or part of this Walk:

(The British were coming with superior numbers. They landed in the southern most part of Long Island and were going to proceed through the densely wooded area towards Manhattan. There were four passes: a) the Guon (later known as Gowanus) which is ~5th Ave with fighting at Battle Hill (Greenwood Cemetery); b) Flatbush Pass which is East Drive in Prospect Park; c) the tiny Bedford Pass; and d) Jamaica Pass (between Brooklyn and Queens). The British did the impossible and force marched via Kings Highway to the Jamaica Pass surrounding our troops. George Washington successfully retreated to Brooklyn Heights in large part because of the Maryland 400 (About 264 Maryland militia). The British had us in a siege between themselves (i.e., hell) and the East River (i.e., high water). Later that night, GW crossed the East River with the help of the Massachusetts Boatmen to Manhattan and while we lost that battle, we did not lose the war!)

Start at 501 6th St Brooklyn, NY 11215

Head northwest on 6th St toward 7th Ave 0.3 mi

Turn left onto 5th Ave 1.0 mi

Turn left onto Main Entrance Greenwood Cemetery 0.1 mi

Turn left onto Battle Avenue 308 ft

Turn left onto Bay View Avenue 0.2 mi

Turn left onto Battle Avenue 476 ft

Minerva Statue Brooklyn, NY 11218 38 min (1.8 mi)

(The Altar to Liberty: Minerva monument: The Battle of Long Island renamed the Battle of Brooklyn is commemorated with a monument, which includes a bronze statue of Minerva near the top of Battle Hill, the highest point of Brooklyn, in Green-Wood Cemetery. The statue stands in the northwest corner of the cemetery and gazes directly at the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. The annual Battle of Long Island commemoration is held inside the main Gothic arch entrance to Green-Wood Cemetery.)

Head back to Battle Ave & turn right onto Border Ave

Notice the Henry Chadwick Grave

Make a left onto the entrance on prospect park west

Prospect Park West Entrance Brooklyn, NY 11218 8 min (0.4 mi)Head northeast toward 20th St 105 ft

Continue onto Prospect Park West 0.4 mi

At the traffic circle, take the 4th exit onto West Dr 0.4 mi

Slight left onto Center Dr 397 ft

Slight right 246 ft

Turn right 0.1 mi

Turn left 246 ft

Maryland Monument Brooklyn, NY 11226 22 min (1.1 mi)

(The Monument commemorates the heroic action of the Maryland 400 at the Stone House) Head south toward Well House Dr Take the stairs 253 ft Turn left onto Well House Dr 98 ft Slight right to stay on Well House Dr 0.4 mi Continue onto East Dr 0.1 mi Head north on East Dr toward Midwood trail 0.2 mi (Note the Battle Pass Marker & Dongan Oak Monument, a large granite boulder with a brass plaque affixed, and another marker lies near the road for the Dongan Oak, a very large and old tree felled to block the pass from the British advance.) Continue onto Grand Army Plaza/Plaza St W 0.6 mi Turn onto Flatbush Ave 0.3 mi Chipotle 347 Flatbush Ave Brooklyn, NY 11238 36 min (1.7 mi) LUNCH………………………………………………………..11am (approx.) Head northwest on Flatbush Ave toward Carlton Ave 23 ft Turn right onto Carlton Ave 0.6 mi Slight left toward Cumberland St 397 ft Turn right onto Cumberland St 0.3 mi Continue onto Washington Park 0.2 mi Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn, NY 11201 Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument 22 min (1.1 mi) (The Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument is a freestanding Doric column in Fort Greene memorializing all those who died while kept prisoner on the British ships just off the shore of Brooklyn, in Wallabout Bay. NB: More people died that way than from actual battles.) Head towards Dekalb Ave 0.1 mi Turn right onto Dekalb Ave 0.4 mi Turn left onto Bond St 0.2 mi Turn right onto Atlantic Ave 0.4 mi Turn left onto Court St 75 ft Trader Joe's 130 Court St, Brooklyn, NY 11201 22 min (1.1 mi) (NB: Where George Washington observed the Maryland 400 and a plaque has the quote ‘Good God, what brave fellows I must this day lose!’)

Head south on Court St toward Pacific St 0.5 mi Turn left onto Union St 0.8 mi Turn right onto 4th Ave 0.3 mi Turn left onto 3rd St 472 ft Old Stone House 336 3rd St, Brooklyn, NY 11215 33 min (1.6 mi) (The Old Stone House: A re-constructed farmhouse (c.1699) that was at the center of the Marylanders' delaying actions serves as a museum of the battle. It is located in J.J. Byrne Park, at Third Street and Fifth Avenue, Brooklyn, and features models and maps. NB: The Marylanders did not just defend; they attacked A British force of thousands!) Head northwest on 3rd St toward 4th Ave 433 ft Turn left onto 4th Ave 0.3 mi Turn right onto 9th St 0.1 mi American Legion 193 9th St, Brooklyn, NY 11215 10 min (0.5 mi)

(The 256 dead troops of the Maryland 400 were buried by the British in a mass grave on a hillock on farmer Adrian Van Brunt's land on the outskirts of the marsh. It was from this battle that Maryland gained its nickname the "Old Line State". The Maryland soldiers grave was originally marked with a memorial that stated: "Burial place of ye 256 Maryland soldiers who fell in ye combat at ye Cortelyou House on ye 27th day of August 1776." Yet as the years went by, their story and burial place faded from public memory.

However, not everyone has forgotten the Maryland Regiment, and their grave has been rediscovered where it remains in a fenced-off lot at the intersection of Third avenue and 8th Street in Brooklyn. Despite previous plans for a memorial park, merely a simple placard on the adjacent American Legion building indicates the site from the street.) Head southeast on 9th St toward 4th Ave 0.1 mi Turn left onto 4th Ave 0.1 mi Turn right onto 6th St 0.5 mi 501 6th St Brooklyn, NY 11215 17 min (0.8 mi) Walk should finish around 1pm

1 in 10 NYC public school students is homeless. I was one of them. I kept it from my teachers and friends — doing my schoolwork in the library and imagining a brighter future.

In 2016, I felt like my world was collapsing. My two aunts, then my grandmother, died. This made me afraid that I’d lose my mother and twin brother, too, and be put in the foster care system.

In the midst of all that death, my mother, twin brother, and I were forced out of our Brooklyn home, where I had lived all my life. My mom received a foreclosure notice in the mail. She had known it was coming because she hadn’t been able to pay her mortgage.

At the same time, we were living with my violent father. There was constant arguing and fighting and no silence at home. When we finally had to move, I was glad to be free of his toxicity and animosity, but it was still hard to say goodbye to the house where I took my first steps.

The day we moved, we took a cab to Manhattan, where we thought the Department of Housing Services’ Prevention Assistance and Temporary Housing, or PATH, was located. It wasn’t, so my mom had to pay for another cab to the Bronx, where the intake facility for homeless families was situated. We each took only three sets of clothes. My mom put the rest of our things in storage near our old house.

Once we arrived at PATH, we spent hours waiting, moving from floor to floor, and coming across many people of different nationalities and ethnicities. I saw children crying from hunger — rushing to get the paper bags of free food. I wondered about all the horrific circumstances the people around me were facing. I felt anxious. Angry. Confused. Hopeless. Powerless.

I could tell my mother was terrified that we wouldn’t be given a place to live. She kept saying we would be OK, that “God is always with us,” so we shouldn’t worry. Her hands were shaking, though. She said she had a headache. It wasn’t until after midnight that they put us in a car to take us to a shelter in Bushwick.

Our room there was small and dirty, with two bunk beds and a small bathroom with a shower, toilet, and sink. The water in the bathroom was mostly cold. We had no air conditioning or cable. There was a 9 p.m. curfew. There was no elevator, so we had to take the stairs to the third floor, which was a problem for my mother because she has COPD. My brother and I have asthma, so whenever we bought food, we struggled to carry the bags up the stairs.

Three months after we got there, my brother had an asthma attack, and he was admitted to the hospital. My mom spent two days with him while I stayed with an aunt. When we returned to the shelter, the guy at the front desk said, “You no longer live here.”

“What do you mean?” my mother asked. “Where are my belongings?”

Staying out at night was not allowed, and he claimed we did not call to inform them that my brother was in the hospital, although my mother did.

“I called the front desk as soon as he was admitted, and they said it was fine,” my mom told the supervisor. “I have papers proving my son was admitted to the hospital. How could you just throw us out? My son just got out of the hospital.“

But our room had already been assigned to another family, and that was that. We found all of our things in garbage bags in a storage room. They even threw out all of our food, not knowing whether or not my mom could afford to replace it. The truth is, we had no money to waste.

That night, we had to go back to the PATH location in the Bronx. After a couple of hours, we were put in a van and sent to a hotel to spend the night while they prepared a shelter room for us. In the morning, they took us to a different shelter in Brooklyn, about 20 minutes from the first one.

The second shelter, near the Marcy Houses complex, was a nicer two-bedroom apartment with a bath, although the water there was almost always cold. The curfew was 10 p.m., but there were weekend passes so that we could sleep at a family member’s home.

Through it all, I went to school every day with a smile on my face and tried to keep my head held high. I managed to earn high grades. I studied at the library most days after school, using the free Wi-Fi and computers. I prioritized earning good grades to give myself a chance for a bright future. I don’t ever want my future children to experience the financial problems my family endured. The rough times motivated me to keep pushing through the trials and tribulations.

None of my teachers knew I was homeless. I was terrified someone would find out. It was a secret I kept from everyone because I feared getting bullied — or worse, pitied. I didn’t want to be seen as the “poor” or “unfortunate” girl. I didn’t want to be treated differently or become a laughing stock.

Sometimes, my friends wanted to walk me home, and I had to make up an excuse so they wouldn’t. Or, when I was walking back to the shelter, and I saw kids from my school, I would wait till they left to go inside. I didn’t even tell my two best friends that my family was homeless. My mom kept it from other members of our family, too. We suffered in the shadows.

At school, a popular boy I’ll call Jacob showed up in nice sneakers and cologne. He lived in the first shelter where we stayed — two floors down. One day I said hi, and we started talking. He messaged me on social media, and we became friends. It was shocking to me how someone’s life may appear so much better than yours, but you never really know what challenges they may be facing. Befriending Jacob made me feel less alone.

We spent about one year in the shelter system. I don’t know how my mom managed to get our house back, but she did. But so many other children and teens remain in homeless housing. According to the latest figures from the Coalition for the Homeless, there were 11,563 families living in New York City homeless shelters in March, including nearly 17,000 children. The New York State Education Department published data “showing that more than 111,000 New York City students … were identified as homeless during the 2019-20 school year.” That’s about 1 in 10 children enrolled in district or charter schools. Those not in shelters were often doubled up in shared, temporary housing.

I know what it feels like to wake up one day to find all that you have taken from you. I know what it’s like to be thrown into a new environment that you have no control over. The sheer number of homeless students in New York City reflects how many people struggle through the same horrific experiences that my family endured.

When I’m older, I want to help those suffering from homelessness and hunger. I want to be wealthy one day and give back to my Brooklyn community. Until then, I hope this story gets others like me to talk about this issue and not be ashamed and hide it. It is not our fault.

Sirsy Galarza is a high school senior in New York City and will be studying business administration at the University at Albany, SUNY. She is also a painter and created the art for this story.

Survey finds wide resistance to shelters among NYC homeless population

Most New Yorkers living on the street and subways have been through the city’s shelter system — and don’t want to go back, according to a new survey of 200 “unsheltered” city residents.

More than three-quarters of respondents from all five boroughs — 77 percent — said they had stayed in the shelter system before and opted to return to the street, according to the report released Monday by the Coalition for the Homeless.

Of those who eschewed shelters, 38 percent cited concerns about their safety while another 44 percent blamed city social workers for being either inefficient, overly-controlling, inattentive or disrespectful, the report said.

“No discipline, security don’t do nothing, food sucks, feel like I’m in prison, no love,” one survey respondent said of the city-run system.

“I’m a human being,” said another. “I don’t want to be treated like an ASPCA mutt.”

City social workers, meanwhile, had approached 84 percent of the individuals surveyed. Yet three-fifths of those approached refused the services offered by the workers — usually a trip back into the shelter system.

Fifty-three percent of respondents said they need real housing to get off the streets, while 26 percent also cited jobs and income

Survey respondents were approached while living anywhere from subways stations and sidewalks to parks and office building atriums.

Their answers suggest New York City’s street homeless “see the sacrifice of their safety, dignity, and agency as the unacceptable cost of entering the shelter system and so they are left with no choice but to bed down in public spaces,” the report argued.

New York’s street homeless tend to be older than shelter residents, the report said — and two-thirds of the people surveyed by the coalition said they had “serious health needs.” Just 6 percent said they had family or friends who could provide them shelter in case of inclement weather.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo instituted nightly subway shutdowns last May so cops could clear trains of homeless people amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mayor Bill de Blasio at the time touted “historic” success in offering service to individuals yanked from trains and platforms, but many were simply bused to dangerously crowded shelter facilities.

“People bedding down on the streets are not there by choice, they are there because they lack any meaningful choice,” said Lindsey Davis, the Coalition for the Homeless’ senior director of crisis services.

“Many of these individuals have significant physical health and mental health issues, and the systems currently in place simply fail to meet their needs.”

News After Slow Start, NYC Vaccine Campaign For Homeless Expects Boost Through Johnson & Johnson Shot

New York City has vaccinated several thousand of its homeless residents, making what advocates say is modest progress that they hope will be significantly accelerated by the Johnson & Johnson shot.

So far, 3,550 homeless New Yorkers have been fully inoculated—or about 10 percent of all adults counted in the city’s shelters. For the general population of NYC adults, the coverage is nearly twice as high, at 18 percent.

The doses are administered through the Department of Homeless Services’ vaccination hub in Manhattan and via city-run mobile clinics hosted at shelters. This currently small tally may be an undercount, because city officials said they don’t track unhoused adults who receive doses at sites open to the general public nor from a small number of non-profit shelter providers.

“This is just the beginning. Things are just starting,” said Giselle Routhier, policy director at the Coalition for the Homeless. “We'll have to see how it continues to go in terms of numbers and how many folks DHS is able to reach in the coming weeks and months.”

Progress has been partly shaped by New York State policy, which limits who among the 34,617 adults living in the city’s shelters can receive COVID-19 vaccines from DHS. Parents staying with their children haven’t been eligible because they reside in separate units with individual dining areas and bathrooms. Those quarters don’t qualify as congregate settings under state rules.

Vaccine doses offered through homeless services can only go to single adults —currently about 18,000—plus the staffers who work in these places. That includes congregate shelters for single adults, where eight to 12 people on average share a room, as well as the hotels, where city officials moved many homeless individuals during the pandemic to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

Christine Quinn, a former City Council Speaker who runs Women in Need, the city's largest family shelter provider, said she’d like to see the DHS vaccination hub and mobile vaccination clinics be expanded to families as they become eligible.

“Anything that is targeted specifically at homeless people is better and more welcoming. And anything that is out there that includes singles, we want to have include families as well,” she said.

A spokesman at the Department of Homeless Services, Ian Martin, said they’d made strides, fully vaccinating 2,800 staff members alongside the 3,550 clients. More than 11,600 vaccine doses have been doled out overall.

“As the vaccine supply becomes more readily available, we are continuing to adapt our approach and do everything we can to ensure it is easy to access for some of our city’s most vulnerable residents and essential frontline workers,” Martin said in a statement.

Last week, Mayor de Blasio said vaccination “is going to be a big part of how we can start to move out of the hotels at the right time.” On Tuesday, eligibility in New York is also expanding to adults older than 30, ahead of becoming universally available to anyone over 16 on April 6th, which should aid the process of reaching homeless adults.

Advocates for the unhoused said the slow start to the city’s campaign is partially due to the DHS program initially only offering the Moderna vaccine, a two-dose shot that is harder to store and transport. But providers are starting to see improvements with the use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized in late February. It is a single shot that can be kept in normal refrigeration.

“The two doses was [sic] really not going to work for our clients. They're very suspicious of medical care,” said Cassie Dessalines, the program director at the Living Room, a drop-in center for homeless New Yorkers, and Safe Haven, a low-barrier shelter. Both share a location and are run by the non-profit group BronxWorks. By mid-March, only three people had received at least one dose across the two facilities—where the majority of clients are facing mental health and substance use issues. Compare that against a recent episode when 18 clients took Johnson & Johnson shots at the BronxWorks’ site in one day, Dessalines said.

Abigail Graham, 39, who’s been living at the Safe Haven in the Bronx since January, got one of those Johnson & Johnson doses. She said she was hesitant at first but reconsidered because she didn’t want to get her parents and other older members of her family sick.

“I want to see my dad. I want to see my mom,” she said. “I don't want to be the cause of anything happening to them.”

Public health experts caution, though, that it’s valuable to allow homeless New Yorkers to make their own choices. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines outperformed Johnson & Johnson in clinical trials. The two-dose shots recorded higher efficacy rates—above 90%—relative to Johnson & Johnson’s 72% in areas without the variants.

“Being one-size-fits-all and choosing something that potentially has less efficacy for a group of people who are already so marginalized by society, I think, is really ethically dubious,” said Andrew Goldstein, an assistant professor at NYU and a primary care doctor. He currently treats around 60 homeless patients.

But he said he might counsel some patients to seek the Johnson & Johnson vaccine if they’re more likely to be at risk of missing their second dose of the mRNA options from Pfizer and Moderna.

“An individual patient who wants the Johnson & Johnson one because they want the simplicity of it, I think that's a great option and I still think it's a wonderful vaccine,” he said

As NYC homeless sweeps surge, advocates say strategy fails to keep people off streets

By David Brand

It’s become a weekly event for Lukasz Ruszczyk: Sanitation workers visit him on the sidewalk beneath the train tracks that mark the Ridgewood-Glendale border. A Department of Homeless Services employee encourages Ruszczyk to move into a city homeless shelter and looks on as the Sanitation crew tosses his stuff into a garbage truck.

Ruszczyk declines the recommendation to leave, and the laborers come back a few days later. They have visited three times in March, according to notices left by outreach workers informing Ruszczyk of the pending sweeps.

Ruszczyk, 38, says they can keep coming. He has no intention of leaving unless it means securing a permanent and private home. 

“I went to a shelter. I was robbed several times,” he told the Eagle Tuesday, minutes after the latest sweep. “I’d rather freeze than go back.” 

Over the past fifteen months, city officials have stepped up sweeps, or “clean ups,” of homeless encampments across the five boroughs. 

DHS coordinated with city agencies to conduct 1,347 such sweeps last year, more than double the 616 completed between Jan. 1 and Dec. 11, 2019, according to DHS records. The agency provided the data to the Urban Justice Center’s Safety Net Project in response to a Freedom of Information Law earlier this year. The New York Times reported on a portion of the data earlier this month.

About 54 percent of last year’s sweeps, 726 of 1,347, occurred in Manhattan. There were 195 sweeps in Queens, or about 14 percent of the total. In Brooklyn, there were 293; the Bronx, 125; and Staten Island, eight. 

The sweep surge contradicts guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which recommends that municipalities allow people to remain in encampments unless they are guaranteed private rooms. In New York City, they are not. 

Advocates for street homeless New Yorkers say that, in addition to violating public health guidance, the sweep strategy simply does not work to keep people off the streets. 

“They just move people around,” said Josh Dean, executive director of the advocacy organization Human.nyc. “We’re calling for an end to sweeps, not just because they’re cruel, which they are, but they’re really counterproductive.”

If the sweeps were effective, Dean said, city workers wouldn’t have to return to the same Queens overpass to throw out Ruszczyk’s refuse and belongings three times in less than three weeks. The punitive action only erodes trust in outreach workers and further discourages street homeless New Yorkers from agreeing to city services, he said.  

Human.nyc released a four-point proposal Tuesday to end street homelessenss and move New Yorkers into safe and secure permanent housing. One of the pillars calls on the city to “reimagine” outreach by hiring formerly homeless peer workers and allowing teams to provide items like socks and warm meals to people staying in public spaces. Current policy prohibits that direct assistance under the premise that it encourages people to remain outdoors.

The proposal, called the Human Plan, says that’s a misguided notion. Small assistance allows outreach workers to build bonds and trust with homeless New Yorkers, Human.nyc said.

“If they cannot help in the immediate term, homeless New Yorkers tell us, they have no reason to believe they can help in the long-term,” the plan states.

The Human Plan also urges the city to increase the number of temporary “stabilization beds” for people coming off the street and to rapidly move street homeless New Yorkers into permanent housing — the key way to actually end homelessness. To accomplish that goal, the city must develop more supportive housing units and remove barriers to apartments that already exist, according to the proposal.

DHS says its current model works, however. 

The agency did increase the number of stabilization beds last year. And the city moved thousands of homeless single adults out of congregate shelters, where residents sleep in shared spaces, and into hotel rooms with just one or two beds each to allow for social distancing.

The city has added 1,300 beds for street homeless New Yorkers since January 2020, coinciding with the surge in sweeps, said DHS spokesperson Ian Martin. Since establishing its current outreach model, known as HOME-STAT, in 2016, the city has helped more than 4,000 people move off the streets and into shelters.

DHS contracts with the organization Breaking Ground to conduct outreach with each street homeless New Yorker an average of three times a day. Breaking Ground is now working with 33 individuals staying outdoors in Queens and building relationships with 10 others, they said. 

Still, the city has an obligation to address “obstructions of public places or encampments” even if agencies cannot compel people to move into a shelter, Martin said.

When Sanitation, the Department of Transportation or another agency “addresses a condition on the streets, we at DHS and our outreach partners are on hand, continuing to engage any individuals on-site, building on trust and relationships with those individuals, and outlining the range of services available to them, in order to encourage them to accept services and transition off the streets,” Martin added.

Despite those efforts, thousands of New Yorkers continue to sleep in public spaces. 

Volunteers participating in an annual point-in-time count of street homeless New Yorkers identified 3,857 people on subways or public spaces on Jan. 27, 2020, the most recent tally.

Ruszczyk said he has no intention of leaving the sidewalk if there is a chance he will be placed in a large group setting, like the intake shelter for adult men at 30th Street in Manhattan.

He said he became homeless after he was ejected from a Ridgewood apartment building owned by his family last year. He said he threatened tenants who had failed to pay rent and they filed an order of protection against him, forcing him to leave.

He moved into a shelter and continued working in construction until the pandemic hit, he said. There, he said, other residents stole his phone and left him unable to find out about jobs. It was one of several thefts that compelled him to leave, he said.

“I said, ‘My stuff is missing. I lost my job.’ It left me with no money, so I left,” he said. 

He came back to Ridgewood and began sleeping on church steps and sidewalks. At one point, he said, Sanitation workers threw out his construction clothes, making it even harder to find work.

Video of the encounter Tuesday shows a Sanitation crew chief asking Ruszczyk what he could discard and suggesting that Ruszczyk hold onto a toothbrush. Activists from who filmed the sweep contacted the Eagle, which arrived as the garbage truck was leaving. 

Other encounters are harsher. Activists have filmed workers throwing away walkers and homeless New Yorkers have repeatedly reported laborers discarding their identifying documents. 

Raquel Namuche, an organizer with the group Ridgewood Tenants Union, has been working with Ruszczyk and visited him following the sweep Tuesday. RTU has provided food, toiletries and support to Ruszczyk and other New Yorkers experiencing homelessness in and around the neighborhood. 

Namuche has urged the city to provide safe, private and appropriate spaces for people staying outside.

“A lot of these folks want to be indoors, but they’re traumatized by their experiences in shelters,” she said. “We want to know what they’ll do to get people housed.”

Dean, of Human.nyc, said officials and the public tend to blame street homeless New Yorkers rather than consider the resistance to shelters a logical response to services they consider dangerous, unhealthy or fruitless.

“They do that to shift the blame from their own systemic shortcomings to homeless New Yorkers,” Dean said. “It’s not that people on the streets are service resistant; it’s not that they don’t want to come inside. It’s that they don’t have the right offer.”

It's Girl Scout Cookie season! Here's how to help a troop of homeless girls in NYC

By Kait Hanson

That viral tweet you've seen is true: You can order Girl Scout cookies to support homeless girls in New York City.

Girl Scout Troop 6000 is tailor-made for girls in New York's shelter system. An estimated 70,000 people live in the city's homeless shelters; the average stay is 18 months before families transition to permanent housing. During that transition, Troop 6000 helps girls enjoy close friendships and plenty of support.

Founded in 2017 by Giselle Burgess, a single mother of five who lost her home, Troop 6000 meets weekly in more than 20 shelters across all five boroughs of New York City. The "6" in the troop's name differentiates it from others in New York City’s five boroughs, which are labeled with 1000s, 2000s, 3000s, 4000s and 5000s.

"Our mission is to instill girls with courage, confidence and character,'' Burgess told TODAY in 2017.

For the girls of Troop 6000, Girl Scouts provides consistency and community that might otherwise be difficult to achieve.

"Shelter used to be just three hots and a cot, but now that we've got 70 percent of the shelter system is families, we have to help children not end up back in the shelter system when they become adults," New York City Department of Social Services Commissioner Steven Banks told TODAY.

Members of Girl Scout Troop 6000 often can be found singing, working toward badges and building bonds of sisterhood — but their connection goes beyond troop meetings.

"It kind of feels like you're not alone,'' a Girl Scout named Sinai told TODAY shortly after Troop 6000 launched. "It shows you that you're not the only one who has the same problem."

As is the case with other scouting troops across the country, 100% of proceeds from cookie sales and other fundraising efforts go toward the troop's badge activities, uniforms and field trips.

Troop 6000 also launched a "Transition Initiative" in 2018 to make sure girls and their parents could continue to have access to Girl Scouting no matter what, even after they leave the shelter system and find permanent housing. The program provides welcome home baskets with personal care items, connections with local Girl Scout troops, and needs-based financial aid for up to three years.

"We're all Girl Scout sisters,'' a scout named Karina told TODAY and NBC News correspondent Morgan Radford. "We're all a pack. And if you see a girl with '6000' on, it just makes you like, we've gone through the same thing or you're still going through it."

Without the Subway, Homeless People Face Tough Choices to Find Shelter in Cold Weather

Christoph Meier knows what it is like to be homeless in New York. It is one reason why he assembles care packages of socks and snacks to hand out to homeless people at night.

"I know when I was out there, this is what I would want," he said while putting together his care packages.

He is homeless himself after his work installing carpets dried up in the pandemic. For now, he's living at a Holiday Inn on the Lower East Side.

On this night, he distributes the care packages inside the Delancey Street-Essex Street station.

Temperatures are in the low 30s - a Code Blue night when anyone seeking shelter in the system cannot be denied.

"They usually go to the subway and find a corner to sit, to stay covered from the wind and rain stuff like that," Meier said.

Last January, the city estimated that 1,670 people were living in the subway. But since May, the MTA has closed the system every night from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. because of the pandemic to clean the stations and trains. That makes this the first winter that homeless New Yorkers are blocked from seeking refuge here.

Meier says he's seen people who are homeless take drastic measures as a result.

"They go and they stay in some dumpsters that they got blankets and stuff all inside the dumpsters, but they can close it, and it shields them, and they get up in the morning, it shields them from the wind and the cold and the rain," Meier said.

Others head deeper into the system, entering tunnels and desolate corners of stations.

The Department of Homeless Services places outreach workers at subway terminals.

Since May, more than 6,182 individuals have accepted referrals to shelter services. As of Monday, 747 of them were still sheltered.

"For the smaller subset of people that are given the option to come inside to a stabilization bed, typically, a hotel room, that they are coming inside at a much greater rate and they're staying inside," said Giselle Routhier, policy director with the Coalition for the Homeless.

The Department of Homeless Services says it can take hundreds of encounters with an outreach worker before someone accepts help, adding, "We intend to keep coming back again and again, through this effort and our ongoing 24/7 outreach, to make those breakthroughs," a Department of Homeless Services spokesperson said.

One man who was blocked from walking into the station after it closed asked Meier to call 911, earning him a trip to the hospital, providing an escape from the cold.

"He doesn't even have a jacket," Meier said. "So what people like that do is, they go to the hospital, they say they got chest pains, so that because it's a hospital, they have to take them, and that's what they do so they have a place for the night."

Still, there is no full accounting of where all of the homeless people who usually stay in the subway are spending their nights, now that the system is off limits. But advocates believe that once the subway fully reopens, many will return to this shelter of last resort.

George McDonald, who founded NYC homeless advocacy nonprofit The Doe Fund, dead at 76

Ready, willing and able.

This was the simple credo by which a generous man lived his life, and the philosophy adopted by the nonprofit he started to give homeless men and women a chance.

Doe Fund founder and president George McDonald died Tuesday after a battle with lung cancer, but not before he made an impact on the city by reaching into its gritty underbelly to put people back on their feet.

“No person has done more to improve the lives of homeless adult men in New York City than George,” the company said in a statement announcing McDonald’s death. “His fiery Irish Catholic spirit gave him the gall to fight relentlessly for those overlooked. His unwavering patriotism motivated him to make the promise of America accessible to those for whom it was out of reach.”

McDonald, 76, of Manhattan, started the Doe Fund after a homeless woman known as Mama Doe died of neglect on a bench after police kicked her out of Grand Central Terminal on a cold Christmas Day in 1985.

McDonald was working as a Garment District executive at the time, and in the mid 1980s, he volunteered to feed hundreds of homeless in the terminal and at a nearby soup kitchen daily at 10 p.m., including Mama Doe.

“They arrested me four times for doing that, for violating governmental administration,” he said of his efforts in Grand Central, in a 2017 Daily News interview. All the charges were eventually dropped, he added.

New York Mayoral candidate George McDonald listens to other Republican mayoral candidates during a television debate in New York Wednesday, Aug. 28, 2013. (Craig Ruttle/AP)

In 1987, he and his wife, Harriet Karr-McDonald, formed the Doe Foundation, with a mission of finding employment for indigent New Yorkers, based out of the couple’s Upper East Side home, he told The News.

The organization swelled to a $65 million operation with more than 500 employees, many of them former homeless clients.

“George McDonald founded @TheDoeFund with the understanding that hiring & housing homeless individuals made New York City a better place,” tweeted Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer. “He was a man of great generosity. He will be missed.”

The Doe Fund has also opened or is building more than 1,000 affordable housing units and nearly 900 transitional beds for more than 1,000 housing for seniors, veterans, low-income families and people living with HIV/AIDS and other physical and mental disabilities.

Doe Fund founder George McDonald announces his candidacy for Mayor of New York City on Thursday, January 10, 2013 at Grand Central Terminal. (Susan Watts/New York Daily News)

Tributes poured in from across the city from people who worked hand-in-hand with McDonald or were just touched by his generosity.

“George was always a trusted colleague, adviser and, most of all, friend,” Gov. Cuomo said in a statement. “We judge a life well lived by the consequence of action. George made New York State a better state and improved life for literally thousands. He made a real difference. Today the family of New York joins with Harriet and the entire Doe Fund family in mourning this tremendous loss.”

“Hearts are heavy today with the passing of our dear friend and mentor George McDonald,” tweeted Maria Cuomo Cole, a producer of social impact films, and Gov. Cuomo’s sister. “His lifetime of service to the homeless will forever inspire my commitment to dignified housing and opportunity for the most vulnerable among us. He is more than a hero.”

The woman for whom the The Doe Fund was named was wearing a scarf McDonald gifted her when she died, and he began anonymously paying for the funerals of homeless people until the end of his own life, a company representative said.

“Homelessness in New York City will always be with us,” McDonald said in 2017. “We are the most generous city on the planet. And we believe that every person who comes here, no matter where they are from, should not sleep on the street.”

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McDonald died at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. He’s survived by his wife, four children and several grandchildren.

JOHN ANNESE

New York Daily News

Report: Homelessness for Single Adults in NYC Reaches Record High

NEW YORK - For months, the city has been grappling with how to handle people experiencing homelessness in the midst of a pandemic. 

Now, a leading advocacy group says the problem is getting worse. 

 On Wednesday, the Coalition for the Homeless released new data showing the number of single adults sleeping in city shelters every night has reached a record high. In October, more than 20,000 single men and women were in shelter. 

“In the past year alone the number of homeless single adults in shelter has increased by 10%,” said Giselle Routhier, the policy director for the Coalition for the Homeless. "In the past decade, the number of single adults in shelter has more than doubled.”

The alarming figure comes as the mayor continues to defend his decision to move hundreds of homeless men out of the Lucerne Hotel on the Upper West Side. 

The mayor had promised to move the men out of the hotel earlier in the fall after some residents complained that their quality of life was deteriorating. The city has been housing thousands of homeless men and women in hotels to protect them during the pandemic. 

The mayor said he would move the men to a hotel downtown. 

That move is now on pause after some of the men and residents in Lower Manhattan sued.

Former staff members of the de Blasio adminstration are also speaking out against their old boss. 

In a letter signed by more than 20 former top aides, including two deputy mayors, they urge the mayor to change his mind.

"Although it is within your legal power to move these shelter residents,” it reads, "it is not in anyone’s best interest." It goes on: "Now is the time to use your discretion and judgement to lift up the people you came into office to help, rather than those trying to keep them down.”

Lincoln Restler, who worked in the administration for seven years, signed onto the letter.

“We cannot defer to the loudest, angriest voices,” Restler said. "For some reasons, Rudy Giuliani former deputy mayor has somehow convinced City Hall to do the wrong thing. And my former colleagues and I are asking the mayor to change course.”

But on Wednesday, the mayor doubled down.

“This move is going to happen, but there are still other folks in need who can use their warmth and their support this holiday season,” the mayor said.

“I respect my colleagues a lot,” de Blasio said. "I just very much have reviewed this situation carefully. I have had conversations with Commissioner Banks in detail about this. We are doing the right thing."

And in a separate letter to the Department of Homeless Services on Wednesday, the head of the council’s committee on general welfare, Stephen Levin, said his committee would investigate all of the city’s relocation efforts, specially at the Lucerne.

COVID-19 Pandemic Driving Homelessness In NYC To Record Levels, Advocates Say

The advocates call the numbers “astronomical.” They say for the first time the number of single adults sleeping in city Department of Homeless Services shelters reached more than 20,000. That includes an all-time record of 15,369 single men — and a near record of 4,841 single women — in October, the latest statistics available.

All of this is according to the campaign 4 NY/NY Housing — a coalition of advocacy groups.

“This dire homelessness crisis among single adults has been exacerbated by COVID-19, which has already forced more individuals into homelessness and will likely worsen in the coming months,” said Giselle Routhier, policy director for the Coalition for the Homeless.