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The Spectrum is the online publication of the Urban Journalism Workshop, a career prep program for teens at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.
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News
When Park Closes, Homeless Must Go
By Rubimar Torres
Spectrum staff
When Union Square Park closes at 11:30 every night, New York City employees make the same an announcement: “The park is closing … The park is closing.”
Those Department of Parks and Recreation employees shout that warning to the people—many of them look homeless—sleeping on park benches, sitting on park benches, smoking cigarettes on park benches.
The park workers are carrying out that job duty as New York City is experiencing a surge of homelessness. Any occupants of those park benches–homeless or not–who refuse to leave, gets ticketed and fined. They even can be arrested.
“You know how we cage animals and they can’t leave?” said Joseph Alexander Garel, a homeless man, who was carrying a guitar. “It’s the exact, like, here’s this land that’s yours anyway, but now you can’t enter it.”
He’s a taxpayer, too. And, for him, being kicked out of the park is really unjust.
“My job is just to close the park, said a park worker who would only give this reporter her first name, Chyanne. “If people choose to stay the police and my supervisor are the ones who handle that.”
She sees familiar faces at Union Square Park. They often settle into that space during the day and try to stay overnight, she added. “There are people who come here frequently and see this park as the closest thing to home.”
As homelessness has surged in New York City, homeless people’s request for temporary shelter has risen 79 percent over the past decade, according to a March 2017 report by the Coalition for the Homeless. The coalition also reported that, in May 2017, more than 61,000 New Yorkers were homeless and more than 22,000. Sky-high housing costs are largely to blame.
“It makes no sense to close these parks,” said homeless New Yorker Garel, who was in the park with a homeless friend who chose to remain anonymous, “especially when some of these homeless people are still paying taxes. They should be allowed to stay and sleep in a place where they feel most comfortable.”