Thread by @thebl0w

I was at a midtown hotel yesterday as homeless New Yorkers were forced out. I’m going to share what I witnessed because the level of disregard Dept of Homeless Services showed for people’s health & well being was shocking & I think it’s a window into the damage they do regularly.

I’ll start by saying that I’m friends with people who’ve lived in DHS shelters so I’m already aware of the terrible conditions: sleeping 30 ppl to a room, broken toilets, rotten food, people having mental breakdowns while you try to sleep. I was still not prepared for what I saw.

Where do I begin? The DHS move-out operation was an utter shitshow. Homeless residents stood outside for hours and hours in the 85 degree heat waiting for buses to take them to shelters. There were no staff outside to direct people, there were no bottles of water. It was chaos.

This particular hotel was home to many women with mental health diagnoses & medical conditions. Many residents had not been told where they were going, or at exactly what time, so they were standing there, with all their belongings, and no idea where they would sleep that night.

Standing in the hot sun with all your possessions waiting to be sent to an unknown location would be stressful for any stably-housed yoga mat-toting Manhattanite. For people w/ vulnerable states of mental health it was a complete disaster. Women were breaking down. It was chaos.

I saw a woman sitting by the sidewalk with her bags for hours, not talking to anyone. I tried talking to her & she was not very verbal. She didn’t respond when I asked if she knew where they were sending her. All she said was, “They told me wait here.” Hours earlier.

I met a woman named Jacobie, who had been waiting over seven hours to be transferred. She said, “If that building over there burned down there would be so many people out here helping them out, food, bottled water, anything to make them comfortable. We didn’t have any of that.”

“You mean to tell me de blasio doesn’t know we’re moving out & he couldn’t make sure we’re treated right & decently? You know how many people urinated on themselves today because once you left the building you couldn’t go back in to use the bathroom?” Jacobie was fed up with DHS.

I feel like if anyone I know was planning to move 200 women in varying degrees of medical vulnerability to a new location, they would put some effort into making sure people were comfortable, if only to ensure that their conditions didn’t worsen in the move. DHS did the opposite.

DHS’s hotel move out process seemed almost intentionally brutal. People were confused & uncomfortable & hungry & thirsty & in pain & it was so violent & unnecessary. Im still rattled from seeing it. My friend Tanya said, “You don’t understand. That’s how they treat us every day.”

I just read that at a press conference today @NYCMayor again told the lie that people get emotional & mental health services in shelters & that’s why they have to return there. DHS doesn’t care for people this way, there are no services. Its a myth to clear people out of midtown.

Here’s the thing: there is a pretty simple solution to the homelessness crisis in NYC. People could leave the hotels and go directly to housing if @NYCMayor would implement Intro 146, a bill to increase the value of housing vouchers that has already been passed!#HotelsToHousong

If de Blasio would immediately implement Intro 146, housing vouchers would go from $1265 to $1900 monthly value: thousands of homeless New Yorkers could get apartments and *not be homeless anymore.* Also: they could avoid living in congregate death traps in a pandemic.