Homelessness in Ithaca and Buffalo

Homelessness: Ithaca and Buffalo 

 

I don’t know of any American city that doesn’t have a homelessness problem. In Ithaca, New York, we have about 60 unhoused people, and that’s out of a population of approximately 100,000. Other numbers I’ve heard that there are 200 people looking for apartments, and how these numbers are tabulated, I don’t know. Larger cities have larger problems: New York City, 61,940) and Los Angeles, 65,111. The Cornell Sun published an article about homelessness on April 24, 2023:  Shedding Light to the “Jungle,” Drug-Ridden Homeless Encampments a Mile Away From Cornell - The Cornell Daily Sun (cornellsun.com) and included the wonderful statistic that The Jungle, where you could say the homeless call home, is less than two miles from Cornell. The students who attend college come from households with a median income of $151,000. If the 26,284 enrolled Cornell students each gave 100 to the homeless, that would be $43,732 for each person, which is more than Ithaca’s household median of $40, 973. Even if students shelled out 50 or 25 dollars, that would be a windfall for these 60 individuals. You could live on $15,000 a year if you had Section 8 housing were okay with eating at Loaves & Fishes, and getting around on a bike.

 One solution to alleviate homelessness proposed by Common Council member, George McGonigal, was to build “100 units of supportive housing.” This was in April. I don’t know where that project is, or if there is money for it, but I do know that George McGonigal is retiring soon from Common Council.  

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When I was growing up in Orchard Park, New York, there were no homeless people, or if they existed, they were invisible. During my high school summer, I worked in downtown Buffalo at Hughes Quality Coffee Shop. The bus ride was about an hour from my house. Customers at Hughes placed their orders at the counter. Most of the food consisted of meat sandwiches made on a giant sandwich board, visible to all, so the customer could scream out: “I said: I don’t want mustard!” or “Don’t forget the mayo!” There were always two hot dishes: Welsh rarebit, or macaroni-and-cheese. Sometimes chili. One afternoon, as I was closing-up, a large man staggered in. His face was sunburnt and his eyes, shell-shocked. He was in bad shape. He asked me if I had any food, and I looked around, then grabbed a paper bag and filled it with the morning’s jelly donuts, which by 4 pm, were stale. He took the bag and thanked me and walked right back out the door. I had hoped he would not linger: I did not want the owner, who was Greek, and a really nice guy, to see what I had done.

This summer I went back to Buffalo with my daughter, Anna; her husband, Robert; and their two-year-old, Issy. We found that Hughes (304 Main Street) had turned into Bubble Tea World.  The owners (Taiwanese?) were gracious enough to allow me inside. The inside bore no resemblance to what I remembered: high black tables, stools, black and white tile, all fashionable back in the 70s. I asked to go downstairs. An odd request, but I hoped there was something that had not changed. Wish granted: the stairs were still the same: narrow, dangerously steep, and cacked with decades of dirt and grime. Behind Bubble Tea World, and this I recalled too, was Cathedral Park and St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. The park now had a modest playground of the usual tunnels and slides. As Issy was gearing up for a few moments of real playground action, a woman driving by in a car, opened her window and said, “Don’t let him play there. It’s where all the homeless sleep.”

The homeless everywhere, all around, have a bad rep: they’re dirty and diseased, and they even disrespect your playground.

We left the playground and went to bookstore instead.

But the day was sunny and warm, and we walked around downtown Buffalo, and its remarkably empty streets. We were told that since Covid most people worked at home. Others attributed the empty streets to a lack of jobs, and certainly the lion’s share of jobs left the city in 1983 when Bethlehem Steel, where my father had worked as an engineer, made its last bar of steel. Downtown was so empty, that it wasn’t even worthwhile for a poor person to claim a corner and hold out a sign.  

I attended high school in South Buffalo at Mt. Mercy, a Catholic all-girls school. Even when I had to take the city bus home (when I had volleyball practice, which wasn’t for long, because the team soon dropped me), I never noticed any homeless people. (Current estimate is between 2,500 and 4,000 homeless in Buffalo.) Maybe because my radar was not tuned to pick them up? Or if there were homeless people, they lived in New York City, a six-hour drive east, then south, which might as well have been at the other end of the world.

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I don’t remember homelessness being an issue in the other cities I lived in: Houston, Texas; Greenbelt, Maryland; Madison, Wisconsin; Bismarck, North Dakota; or Shoreview, Minnesota.  I lived in Houston and Greenbelt in the late 70s and early 80s, and the homeless population, if it existed, was well hidden. As for the midwestern cities, I’m sure the brutal winters kept the homeless away. When we arrived in Bismarck, January, 1989, temperatures for a solid week never rose above 30 below. Wind chills were in the minus 50s, and we plugged in our car at night so it would start in the morning. I was a big runner back then, but when the temperatures dropped below minus 30, I ran at the Y.

I don’t remember distressed individuals holding up cardboard signs at road intersections and asking for money. It seems like a hard way to make a living. Isn’t there an easier way?

I read somewhere that what the poor really dislike is to be ignored. Whenever it’s possible, and when I’m not speeding off somewhere on my bike, I hand over a dollar or two to the waiting hand. I usually mention Loaves and Fishes, how every meal has meat, fruit, and fresh vegetables.

“Loaves and Fishes has two certified cooks, and they take pride in their meals,” I say. “Everything is made from scratch.” I’m usually there Friday, 11 to 2-ish. Last Friday there were 234 diners, and I washed every plate, cup and fork. There’s an automatic dishwasher that sanitizes so I didn’t have to worry about that. Someone else always dries. For that two-and-a half hours, I am totally focused, in the zone.   

The person waiting for the dollar always nods, and looks like he (almost always a he) wants me to leave ASAP. Next person, please.

There’s a rotund man, bundled summer and winter, a little taller than me (I’m five-five) with a black knit hat who stands at South Meadow and South Titus, or outside the library on the corner of Green and Cayuga Streets. At his feet are a few plastic bags of belongings. His name is Jay.

Once, when I mentioned Loaves and Fishes, and pointed toward the church, he seemed mildly interested. I have never seen him there, but then I don’t go to all five meals. Five meals a week, you could live on that if you needed to, if you lived nearby and were organized enough to know when they cook lunch and when they cook dinner. When I asked if he was homeless, he said, “No, I live down that way.” He vaguely waved his hand. It was cold out, not quite freezing, no sun (is there ever?), and I wanted to get home. He seemed impervious to the cold. I asked if he had considered social security, if he needed help, and he looked down at the ground, and narrowed his eyes disdainfully, as if he wanted nothing to do with the government.

Everyone knows him well enough so he’s not required narrate his story of woe on a piece of cardboard. He just wants the money. I usually stop and give him a dollar. He has whitewashed eyelashes that look cacked with flour. I can’t help but think that’s because he’s always outside, looking into the sun, hoping for a dollar. Then another, and another.