Mother’s Day is almost here, and 1,800 Women take their Newborn Infant “home” to a NYC homeless Shelter.
25,000 children are calling a homeless shelter their place of residence.
Yes, society is ultimately robbing these kids of their childhood, and making them fall behind academically, where they spend the rest of their school years trying to catch up, if at all.
I spoke to longtime Homeless Activist Mary Brosnahan of the Coalition for the Homeless down at their office on Fulton Street. For decades, Brosnahan has fought the good fight.
“These moms and kids are almost universally homeless because they can’t afford housing.” She said.
Brosnahan says the Homeless policies of new Mayor Bill Deblasio are a step in the right direction, but the past is hard to overcome.
“Without a doubt. (She said, praising Deblasio, but then criticized the two past mayors) We had two decades, first Giuliani who had a complete criminalization approach to homelessness and tried to get rid of the right to shelter, which the coalition established, and then you had Bloomberg who initially seemed to understand that we needed to have more NYCHA (public housing) and more section 8, and then completed backed off any housing based solutions. Brosnahan said with her always calm demeanor. (But you can tell the homeless history offends her to her core)
And yes, Brosnahan says the perception may indeed be reality about more homeless people on the subways these days. She points to Governor Cuomo’s role in all of this.
“All the money that was saved by closing down those psychiatric hospitals was never transferred into community based housing and support services. “
However, I just could not get over the new perspective Brosnahan gave me on Mother’s Day when she told me that over the past year alone, over 1,800 newborn babies were brought “home” to a homeless shelter, and that over the past year, NYC has made records for all the wrong reasons. That’s 42,000 different kids spent at least a night in a New York City Homeless Shelter last year.
I’m far from a bleeding heart liberal, but this is shameful.
It was pleasant to hear that the Coalition for the Homeless does have a summer camp for the Children in Bear Mountain. (about an hour drive outside NYC, right off the palisades Interstate Parkway)
I state all of this, as the state of Kansas just signed into law some of the country’s strictest prohibitions on where welfare money can and can’t be spent. Concerts are out, Casinos, Lingerie, Fortune tellers, tattoos. I say maybe that’s a good thing, but I can understand how others might disagree.
I asked Brosnahan why is she such a strong Homeless advocate, and she said:
“I was drawn to this issue because it’s so solvable.”
“Kids steal your heart. They have the same dreams that our kids do.” She said.
Amen. Kids do steal your heart, and we as a society must do better by them.