The Ghosts of Penn Station NYC (homeless disappearing pre conv.)

[donsu]

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0433/gonnerman.php

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The upcoming convention has been on the minds of homeless people in the area for weeks. Will they be able to get to their favorite soup kitchens? What if they don't have any ID? Will they get picked up the police? Will their bags and shopping carts be searched? What if they're carrying a small knife (to use for protection, or as a can opener)? Will they get arrested? Perhaps the most pressing question of all is: What about check day? Will they be able to get into the post office on Ninth Avenue to pick up their public assistance check on September 1?

Local agencies, city officials, advocacy groups, and the police have been meeting for months to discuss many of these concerns. The Church of the Holy Apostles, which serves lunch to about 1,150 people a day, is making photo ID cards. The food pantry at St. John the Baptist Church on West 31st Street is closing for convention week, but providing double the amount of groceries the prior week. The Olivieri Center for Homeless Women, a drop-in center on 30th Street, is providing extra storage space and encouraging clients to leave their bags inside lest they get confiscated.

After looking around the PATH station and finding nobody they know, Washington and Rabinovici leave, cross Seventh Avenue, and head down the escalator into Penn Station. The dozen or so people who used to sit along the perimeter of the Amtrak waiting area are not around. Even the three old ladies who were a fixture here, always standing near the Eighth Avenue and 33rd Street exit, have disappeared.

Of all these missing people, Washington and Rabinovici are especially eager to track down Charles, who is halfway to getting his own home. It took them four months to convince Charles to go to a drop-in center, and eventually they helped him fill out an application to get an apartment through the Street to Home Initiative. Charles just needs to sign a form to complete this process, but now they can't find him.

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Some homeless people have told Rabinovici and Washington they have convention plans. One said he was going to check into the Bellevue shelter for the week; another plans to pitch a tent in a Staten Island park. Noel, however, insists he will not budge. "What's the big deal about the convention?" he asks. "Why should we have to move because we're homeless? That don't make sense to me. Unless they don't want the Republicans to know we're on the street." He pauses, surveying the sidewalk scene on this sunny day. "They want people to think New York is spotless," he says, but "everything is not beautiful."
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the bushgang could care less what people thought of NY city, they want the homeless gone so the conv. goers won't have to see or deal with them.

you have to read the article to get the full scope of what is happening to these people.

[Gothic Sponge]

1. I'd like to put the homeless in MSG!

Give them some food and a show! Put the GOP out on the streets of NYC!

[madrchsod]

2. Daley did the same thing in 68

put up plywood all over to make Chicago pretty for his convention. there were not as many homeless in 68 because the states hadn`t dumped out all their state facilities for the mentally/physically impaired people

[Blue_Tires]

3. this is nothing new

I used to live in Atlanta, and at that time the city had come up with some interesting ways of cleaning out the homeless before the 96 summer games, including offering them a small stipend and a 1-way bus ticket anywhere in the nation