Everyday barriers

Some days you can set out to change the world and you find that the world changes you.

So there I was at 11am, sitting in the New York Human Resources Administration (HRA) with everyone else waiting for an appointment about Medicaid, food stamps, drug rehabilitation support, housing and child care. I had been there about two and a half hours, and as I sifted through more than 100 pieces of application papers (so confusing for even this UC Berkeley/Oxford grad), I felt a tug at my ankle and discovered a happy face of a little girl crawling on the floor. Her mother was across the bright purple room from me talking about how her phone was disconnected so when HRA couldn’t get a hold of her, the food stamps were cancelled. A deep voice next to me was struggling to read the electronic numbers on the signpost with a pair of broken glasses and then he began to comment, “all these teenagers having babies and you know the daddies just run away fo’ sho. The only place they can go is here. This is the only help for them babies.” It made me think about the night before when my sister and I were watching the Irish news about a woman who had tried desperately to get help from social services for severe depression, but no one was there that day…in the meantime, she killed herself and her children.

So why was I here?

Well, the seven Acumen Fund Fellows showed up to work one morning and were asked to empty our pockets. We were given a paper explaining that our assignment for the day was to write an article from the perspective of the poor about the quality of New York’s social services. We were given a $6 metro card, a $5 bill and a paper listing the instructions and some homeless shelters, clinics and food stamp offices. Our challenge was to live for a day as if we were poor so that we could understand better all the day to day struggles of our clients—the poor.

I had started off early in the day hoping to go to a rehabilitation center on our list in Staten Island, but when I got off the free ferry and finally found someone who knew the zip code, I realized there was no bus and it was so many miles away that I didn’t have enough money to get there by cab. So I asked around and landed at a drop-in shelter where people were sleeping on chairs. After a bit of chatting, some of the clients at the shelter pointed me to the food stamp office a few blocks away. On my way there, I tried to use the bathroom in a restaurant, but was not allowed if I didn’t buy something. I finally found a Taco Bell, but the bathroom was so filthy it literally made me vomit. They were nice enough to give me some water and I met two homeless women outside—Micky and Annie. These two women had been friends for the past year and were a wonderful example of how the homeless community supports one another with kindness.

Micky, who was 55 yrs old and had been on the streets for decades, showed me where she had been shot before and gave me lots of tips on locations of the cleanest shelters, best free breakfast, clothes and more. Annie had track marks all up her arm but insisted that she was not an addict, only a recreational drug user. She had been abused and raped after she began living on the streets because she lost her job when one of the military bases closed several years ago. She was in and out of foster care as a child and according to her, Alcoholics Anonymous was the only reason she was still alive. She receives $156 per month in public assistance from HRA and uses it to buy food such as milk, fried chicken, Kool Aid, iced tea, Taco Bell and Splenda soda. She gave me tips on getting assistance and said that people there were always very nice to her.

Next, I walked into the HRA not exactly sure what to do and decided to take on the identity of many of the women I met at the shelters I had worked at in California. A friend of mine once said that, “the application for public assistance treats you like a potential felon, PhD and an idiot at the same time.” Its true! After standing in a few lines, being puzzled by paperwork and sitting in the wrong room, I finally got an interview, and my heart was racing as I shared my story.

My story: I was a young woman two months pregnant, with a two-year old child, who fled to New York escaping a violent relationship. Broke, with a 10th grade education and only work experience from Walmart several years ago, I had lived with my boyfriend after the birth of my child and had never applied for public assistance. I had a place to live in NY for only one more week, but after that my child and I would be on the streets. I needed help in finding shelter, applying for food stamps, getting medical support, getting some cash, getting job placement support and child care.

The woman from HRA was very nice to me, but I had a tough time understanding her. I didn’t have my social security card or birth certificate, so she couldn’t process my paperwork. I didn’t have an address and she said I needed some address or they couldn’t issue me anything. She had no idea where I could get a social security card, and I was all out of money (had given it to Micky and Annie outside Taco Bell), so I couldn’t call anywhere to find out. I certainly couldn’t go to my boyfriend’s house to get it because we were hiding from him since he abused my son and me. When I told her I was two months pregnant and needed a doctor, she said it didn’t matter until I was four months pregnant. There were so many confusing components of the conversation because she was thinking of her system and I was thinking of my needs—a mismatch. If I was a shy, less confident person, I might have just made assumptions and accepted that I couldn’t get help. Instead, I asked more questions and finally found out that I could get food stamps the same day if I had my and my son’s social security card and that it takes about a week to open a case for Medicaid, child care services, shelter assistance, domestic violence services, etc. I told her I would try to get some ID (somehow) and come back tomorrow.

I was so overwhelmed and was empathetic of my own story (since it was really a story of so many women I have met before), I felt hopeless. Tears actually began to stream down my face.

I walked down the street and saw a medical clinic. Since many women in these situations might consider getting an abortion, I decided to inquire about getting an abortion if I didn’t have insurance, money or an address. While waiting in line, I talked to several patients, held someone’s baby and found out about lots of interesting services offered in the clinic. When I finally talked to a nurse, she kindly and discreetly referred me to a Planned Parenthood office in Manhattan where I later went and found out that it was $500 unless you had Medicaid (which if you remember, I still needed my social security card and address to process).

On the ferry back to Manhattan, I stared at the Statue of Liberty, clutching my mountain of application papers, feeling hopeless: how could the people be so friendly, but the system itself be so unfriendly? Millions of people feel hopeless like this every day.

I tried next to apply for several jobs—Tasty Delite Ice Cream wasn’t hiring and Staples and BofA told me to go online. When I said I didn’t have Internet, they told me to go to the library, which I later found out only has 15 minutes usage at a time and rather long waiting lines for Internet. McDonald’s was the only place I got an application on-site, a drink of water and a smile with a “here you are, mamacita.” I walked out of there wondering who would watch my two-year-old child if I got my minimum wage job at McDonald’s.

My feet started to get tired and I was hungry, but I had no money and there was no place clean to sit. I sat on the concrete and several people stared at me like I was crazy. Henry, a homeless man with several mental and physical disabilities, was across the street, so I went to him and chatted. He was asking for spare change so I gave him the remaining money on my metrocard and watched as so many people ignored him.

In the evening, my Acumen Fund friends came together to share our stories and reflect on the day. All of our experiences had similar themes:

1. the power of kindness and communing as human beings
2. the importance of recognizing, honoring and channeling the knowledge of users of the system (the poor were more helpful than anyone else in getting around)
3. the terribly unfriendly systems (even if well intended) and importance for accountability within those systems and leaders who are concerned with the entire architecture of the system to make wholesale differences in people’s lives
4. the importance of dignity, trust and community

Anthony Romero, the Director of the American Civil Liberties Union joined us to facilitate the discussion and started with a story about a successful bank who made its staff fill their shoes with pebbles and stand in line all day as customers so they knew what it would be like to be old with bad feet and finally get to the teller. Knowing your customer is the most important asset any business can have, and while I was homeless in NY for only a day, I learned so much and had a reawakening.

Sparked by years of volunteering in shelters in Oakland, Sacramento and Peru, I once had a dream of creating a universal education curriculum for homeless children that would be distributed through shelters. So many kids are caught in the cycle of poverty because they move so much and go from school to school without consistent support services. Today reminded me to hold onto that dream.

You can also read the weekly reflections of Acumen Fund Fellow Keely Stevenson on www.socialedge.org.