New York’s Homeless Veterans
The composition of the homeless community in New York reveals an unexpected side to life in the city. It is a world where US veteran is forced to sell fake Louis Vuitton bags from a cart on the streets and move from home to home to avoid spending the night in a shelter.
I met that man, Tony, while walking past the crowded Penn Station on 7Th avenue and 36th street last month. An optimistic and energetic man who looked to be around the age of 50, Tony, told me he was a veteran who worked in air traffic control for the US in Korea.
Tony told me that on average a cart vendor earns around $40 to $100 a day. The weather, which can turn bitterly cold in the winters, makes the business seasonal, forcing the workers to stay at home or find another part time job for almost half the year. After the calculation this amount comes up to an annual income of just $15,000 a year. This number is approximately $3,000 a year less than the annual income of individual earning the minimum wage. According to the Department Of Labor starting December 31, 2015 the new minimum wage for New York will be raised from $8.75 to $9 dollars per hour.
With cost of living in New York and rent skyrocketing, average income of the cart seller is not enough to cover a comfortable lifestyle, so, according to Tony, people are forced to co-habitate or move out from New York, giving place to a wealthier community.
Almost 50,000 veterans were homeless on a single night in January 2014 according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Almost ten percent of them were women. Nevertheless the total number is officially lower than in 2013 by eleven percent and by thirty three percent lower than in 2009.
In the past years government and non-profit organizations, have been supporting veterans by launching programs, such as, for instance, Robin Hood’s “Mission: Home” initiative aimed to tackle better coordination for homeless veterans, and by providing assistance with finding employment, administering benefits. According to New York Times, in November this year administration of the president was planning to “call on congress to enact measures to help military veterans gain easier access to health care, disability and educational benefits”. Official statistics from the US Department of Commerce show that unemployment among veterans has gone down by 53.3% from 2010 to 2014. But does having one job helps individual stay afloat?
In the light of last month’s holiday, the Veteran’s day, while government data shows that the number of unemployed veterans has decreased, there are still homeless veterans on the streets of New York trying to make it through the day, one day at a time.
