People Experiencing Homelessness

During the Pandemic, there were many challenges that people experiencing homelessness faced. This moving poem was written by Jennifer Fitzgerald in the summer of 2020 about her experience with housing instability during the pandemic. Fitzgerald is a single mother who was out of work beginning in March 2020, as she worked in New York City jails teaching poetry and writing to inmates. During the pandemic, Fitzgerald took to social media to spread awareness about the vulnerable position she, along with one million other New Yorkers, were in due to their inability to afford rent costs. Unfortunately, there were not many resources available to help those in Fitzgerald’s situation. In reference to her increasingly desperate housing situation, Fitzgerald writes, “I do not know where I am going, but I know I am going to start heading there in a couple of weeks.”

American Landscape: Inheritance

This is not a poem

about losing an apartment

nor is it a poem about losing

three apartments in three months,

which I could write for you

with deftness; this is not a song

for my job long gone, I’m afraid

this is an answer.

I’ll not be so bold as to insert myself

into 200 years of the dream—

of who still dreams it

and who still comes,

of who was born in it

and what’s been done

but geography is fate

and I’ve been here

far too long for gratitude

in the immigrant city,

of the immigrant nation—

after five generations,

the best I could do

was a single room

and some money for food

If I am an answer

then is failure my question?

My images, like my lineage: too grand—

but I am the song my ancestors sang

on their ocean voyage West;

raised on the Statue of Liberty

and the Irish starving in the streets;

raised the impossibility of survival.

I can’t make allegory of an entire life;

at some point I will have to start living.

But I remain at the impossible nexus:

five generations in and ousted

cannot be dressed up in eloquent language, poet.

Disinherited, at last!

from the monolith

I am afraid, but in that fear,

liberation, I tell myself—

because even my homelessness

must have glory written in the margins.

(https://lithub.com/homeless-in-a-pandemic-the-housing-poetry-of-jennifer-fitzgerald)

In efforts to combat the problems that those experiencing homelessness face, a new initiative was launched in New York City called Street Health Outreach & Wellness (SHOW). This program deployed mobile units all across the city in the form of vans equipped with extensive amounts of medical supplies and equipment. The purpose of this initiative was to bring health care directly to individuals who are experiencing homelessness. This photograph shows a person experiencing homelessness receiving a vaccine. One of SHOW’s biggest achievements was vaccinating the homeless people of NYC. This initiative is an incredible example of taking care of those in vulnerable positions and giving resources to those who need them most.