Alissa Semple
MHC 250
Professor Clyde Haberman
March 21st, 2017
Response Paper 4- Hurricane Sandy Experience

When Sandy happened, I hadn’t been worried. Living in Springfield Gardens, New York, not by any particularly daunting body of water convinced me that I would emerge from the storm unscathed. True, Springfield does border Long Island, and Valley Stream was a five minute walk from my home, but I hadn’t given it too much thought. New Yorkers have a very “everything will proceed as normal” type of attitude, a “they’re just blowing it out of proportion” temperament, and remembering Hurricane Irene, which had not affected me much, besides the brief power outage for two days, I shoved Sandy to the back of my mind and told myself it would not be such a big deal.
It was a terribly big deal. I didn’t have power for about four days. A tree fell into my neighbor’s roof. Shingles were torn off of my own roof, causing the water to leak into my living room. Our gate fell over. Sandy turned out to be a big deal after all, but my problems paled in comparison when I spoke to my best friend, who lived in Far Rockaway. Her home was been flooded. Pieces of wood had slammed into her windows at night. A tree fell on her neighbor’s car. All the water caused an asbestos flare up in her basement, so she had to temporarily locate for close to five months while her asbestos-ridden house was scoured by officials.
When I got off the phone with her, after a week of her living with her grandmother in East New York, with my lights, electricity and Wifi restored and everything in my household pretty much back to normal, I decided that I had been lucky.

During Sandy, I remember my father driving my mother, my sister, and I down three blocks to the water’s edge. Here you could see the water was already rising up, and the waves where propelling water over the five foot elevation from where the water ended and the street began. While there was a storm nearing several of my neighbors stood in awe at the waves and the drastic change they were displaying from their usual calm state. The houses that lined the water had their garage doors barricaded with sandbags, and their cars locked away inside. These few houses where the only ones in my neighborhood in true danger of having flooding due to the grade of the hill that my neighborhood lies on. After the storm had come and passed the only true remnants of the storm where fallen trees, and a loss of power on certain blocks. Luckily within a week power was mostly restored and most debris was cleaned off of the roads. I know that my neighborhood was very lucky in how they storm turned out for them, many kids i went to school with were not as luckily since many of them lived in Far Rockaway, or Howard Beach. For months after my school collected donations and offered food to students affected by the stor till their families could get back on their feets. Our yearly walk-a-thon was even revamped to collect money to help those who were severely hurt by the storm.

It was a hot August afternoon. My coworkers and I were walking down Main Street in Flushing, heading towards the annual end-of-summer banquet held by the prep school for which we worked. Out of nowhere, a woman stops us and asks for help. We’re not sure what she needs, so we stand to the side so we can hear better. She asked us for help finding a job, and said she had been living in a shelter with her two children. We had no clue what to say or do except apologize and continue on our way. After all, we had barely graduated high school and were lucky to have jobs ourselves, with nowhere near enough experience or connections to help a homeless woman find a job that would pay her a living wage. We had no clue why she approached us specifically, but my friend Amy thought that it may have been because we were wearing semi-formal clothes for the event, which may have led the woman to think that we had connections to white-collar office workers.

Almost two years later, I still rarely get through my day without seeing at least one homeless person. When I get back to my dorm late, I always see the usual group of people sleeping in the 23rd Street station on the 6 train. Even when I return to Flushing on the weekends, the same people I have seen for weeks or even months are sitting at their usual places on the side streets. I am fortunate enough to never have been homeless, and I don’t think anyone in my immediate family has gone through that experience either. However, I know that one life- changing event can be all it takes to push families over the edge. Though much has been done to combat homelessness in the city, it is still a major problem and, unfortunately, probably will be for the foreseeable future.

Homeless Writing Assignment

Jessica Ng

I think that every person living in New York City has had an encounter with the homeless at some point. As sad as it is, it’s a almost such a common sight that it’s expected. This is particularly true if you ride the subway during the winter, where many homeless people will choose to take shelter. It is not uncommon to see homeless people sleeping near the entrances or on the subway seats. Many homeless people will also go through subway trains to ask for money. For a rider, it’s always an awkward moment when someone starts making an announcement asking for money, and you know they’re going to walk by you.

I haven’t had any particularly personal encounters with a homeless person or homelessness, but as a New Yorker it’s inevitable that I’ve had a few in general. Mostly, it’s been the usual homeless people who walk through the trains asking for money. In some of the more popular train stations, like 59^th St or 68^th St, I’ll see some people with signs asking for money. Recently, I take the subway from the 23^rd St station, which has several homeless people living in it and outside of it. It seems like I cross by many of the same people everyday. Perhaps the most memorable and recent encounter was when a homeless person walked straight up to my mother and I, where we were sitting on the train, and asked for the food that we had in our hands. We refused, but it was somewhat of a scary moment anyways, as the train cart was fairly empty, and the man sat right behind us after we refused. In order to get away from him (and his smell), we moved to the next train cart. Later, I saw him exiting at the same train station as us. Although it seemed like a coincidence, it was still somewhat frightening.

Honestly, I don’t really know how to feel or deal with the homeless. I get that these are people in a desperate situation, but sometimes I have to refuse them, and I feel bad when there’s nothing I can do. I get that people don’t want them near when they’re riding the subway or eating at McDonald’s, but those are public spaces that everyone has a right to. Even if I don’t like dealing with homeless people, I don’t think I have the right to refuse them access. Looking back, it seems terrible that such a sight is so common that it’s expected, but I don’t think it’s something one person can change by themselves.

I take the 6 train almost every weekday, so I tend to see a lot of homeless people. They don’t usually bother me if they are just sitting, taking the train. Sometimes though, they ask for money, often quite loudly. This bothers me for two reasons. First, while I’m on the train I usually try to do something productive like read from a digital textbook on my phone. This becomes much harder when someone, homeless or not, is talking loudly. But second, and maybe more importantly, hearing homeless people talk on the train about how hard their life is and how much they need just a little money will sometimes make me feel bad.

I know I won’t give them money, I never have. I’m very stingy with money. I barely even buy things for myself. And so sometimes I wonder, when I hear a homeless person asking for money, “am I a terrible person?” I guess I never really conclude that I am, because I never do change my behavior. I find reasons to justify myself, like “I don’t have that much money to begin with” or “would giving one dollar to a homeless person really make a big difference?” or “what if they’re just a crook making up this whole sob story to get some extra cash?” It’s kind of funny, because I strongly support laws that make the rich pay more taxes that will go to help the poor and homeless. And I’m not poor, I could give a homeless person a few bucks, and it would probably cost less than paying extra taxes. But on a day to day basis, I never help the homeless with my own money. I tell myself it’s because the city could run an organized operation with our tax money: they could open shelters, feed the homeless, and maybe even help them find jobs. Maybe though, I just want to keep my precious dollars to myself. And maybe that’s why it’s especially important for the government to get involved with these issues. Because individual people, now matter how moral and fair they think they are, just don’t care enough to willingly part with their money.

As I get older, I understand more how easy it is to become homeless and sympathize more with those that don’t have a home. I especially feel bad for them during the winter nights or snow or rain.  If I have it on my person, I will give a homeless person a dollar, a roll of crackers, or an unopened water bottle just to make things a little better for them. I am always surprised to learn that even the smallest gestures can have such a great impact. For example, I was leaving a bubble-tea shop with me friend when a woman at a bus stop called for my attention. She explained that her phone died and they she would appreciate it if I called her shelter to let them know she was on her way in order to reserve her bed for the night. After my two minute conversation, I told the lady the person on the phone said everything will be okay. She was so thankful and wished me and my friend a wonderful, blessed evening. I had never done something like that for anyone before, but the feeling it gave me made me smile. Sometimes it just takes giving someone the time of day for them to have somewhere warm and safe to sleep.

Although I believe that as human beings we should all help one another, I would be lying if I said I treat all homeless people equally. I absolutely hate it when homeless people approach individual persons waiting on a subway platform. It’s never a coincidence that the homeless men only approach women when they are begging for money or food. The gesture doesn’t make me feel lucky or flattered, rather I feel threatened, targeted, and cornered. I know I shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but any homeless person that looks like he or she take drugs or anyone that seems to be pretending to be homeless doesn’t get sympathy or money either. I understand that during the winter the homeless tend to find warmth in the trains, but I find it inconvenient when they take up a significant amount of the cart with their carts and luggage and spread across an entire bench of seats. Overall, I try my best to see an individual as a person and not as their situation. No one is immune to homelessness and it is a part of life that no one should be allowed to ignore.  

I don’t personally have an experience of being homeless, but I’ve seen plenty of homeless people in New York City. It seems like a fact of life for New Yorkers to see the homeless out on the streets and in the subway.

There’s been countless times wherein I would be sitting in the train and a person would enter through the train’s doors and announce that they’re homeless and need help. Most of them ask for money, as well as food and drink to help them last through the day and support their families. They ask for anything, a quarter, a nickel, a dime, and say that any amount of money would help them. However, there have been times in the past when some homeless people would say that exact same phrase and I would choose to give some loose change to them, but they would give me a look and refuse to take the change. Nowadays, I rarely give money to homeless people when they ask on trains. Instead, on the rare occasions when I have food, I give that to them. Many other commuters sitting on the train simply avert their eyes and ignore them, and I usually do the same. I focus my attention to my smartphone and try to think of happier things instead of the bleak reality.

I rarely ever chat with homeless people, unless they explicitly approach me. To be fair to myself, I’m a little socially anxious and can barely handle making small talk with cashiers or even classmates, but I know the aversion is there, insidiously under the familiar lurch of dread that comes with conversing with any stranger. Most homeless people who approach me to ask for food (usually when I’m snacking in a public park with an obvious excess of food) make small talk with me, and they’re incredibly nice. I’ve walked away from every encounter with a smile, so I know I’m being irrational.

I used to volunteer at a food pantry, mostly handling behind-the-scenes work like unboxing and making care packages. Occasionally I’d stay at the “front desk” (a folding table with an ancient laptop with some type of database program installed) and scan people’s IDs as they line up and point them to where the food is. I didn’t make much conversation, because most people didn’t speak English and instead I had to mime to them directions for scanning their IDs (and try to communicate that the system was down so we couldn’t print a new ID this week, which I had to say pretty much every week).

Somehow my reluctance to speak to homeless people never occurred to me until my high school religion teacher pointed out how most people were physically adverse to homeless people, and the kind of emotional damage having someone cross the street to avoid you when you aren’t doing anything but sitting can do to a person. This was one of the few sensible things she ever said, and I took it to heart. She was right–most people will move a few paces away from a homeless person on the street before passing by, and I caught myself doing this a few times.  However, I’m not sure the alternative,passing by as if you don’t see them, is really any better. In fact, I’m sure it’s not. So I try to give change when I pass, and always give food if someone approaches me to ask, but at the end of the day, I can never shake the feeling that I’m not doing enough, because giving change instead of dollars is really not enough. However, guilt is a useless emotion if you never resolve to change.

Some people don’t want to give money to homeless people because they fear it will be spent on drugs or alcohol. I’ve always hated that idea. I think it’s dangerous to refuse to help someone because of something they might do, because if they actually are looking for a meal or another need, they might go hungry for the night because someone thought they might spend it on drugs. Additionally, drug addicts can die from withdrawal symptoms. If I give money to someone and they spend it on drugs, it’s really not any of my business, which goes doubly so if you look at it from a religious perspective, which many people do. So in the end, there really isn’t any reason for me not to give homeless people money, except my own anxieties, which I need to overcome.

Homelessness is a fact of all big cities. New York City is one of the largest cities in the world, and hosts a very visible homeless population. However, despite my over nineteen years as a resident of the city, I have had very few personal encounters with the homeless beyond the occasional donation of change or food. What I do see of the homeless on a day to day basis has had the largest impact on my opinions of them. What I normally see fits into three general categories. The first and most common is comprised of the people who walk through the subway carts telling the story of how they fell on hard times and would appreciate any help. I do not mind this category much, and it is usually the one that I try to help out. The next category is one that does irritate me, if just because of the way they make my environment feel dirty. These are the homeless who usually give the entire group a bad rep. They may be unkempt, intoxicated, or performing unseemly acts. Lastly is the category of homeless who are more seen than heard. They may sit on the side of the street, like a fixture that does not intrude on the tranquility of its surroundings. What I have seen from these three groups of homeless has helped me create an attitude towards them that, while still negative, has been tempered to be more understanding towards them as a whole. This has especially been done through the homeless who tell their stories, allowing me to gain perspective and be more tolerant towards those I may pass by and see.