12 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • NOVEMBER 2019
COVER STORY
DESPITE PROGRESS, HOMELESSNESS
BY TIMOTHY BOLGER
Steve Edmonson, a 62-year-old longtime
security guard who is active
in local civic groups, found himself
without a place to live after his mother
died and her house in Oceanside
was sold.
At first, the Nassau County Department
of Social Services put him up in
the Jones Beach Hotel in Seaford. But
eventually his roommate got hungry,
spent the money for the room on groceries,
which is against the rules, and
they were cut off. After being sent
packing, Edmonson got by living in
his car for a while, but fall set in and
the temperatures began to drop. Now
he’s staying in an emergency shelter
in Uniondale.
“This is a nightmare,” he tells the
Press. “I never thought this would
happen to me.”
Few people imagine such a fate for
themselves. There but by the grace
of God go any of us, Long Island advocates
for the homeless often say.
Edmonson is not alone.
IN THE SHADOWS
In 2018, Nassau and Suffolk counties
had a combined 3,781 homeless people
— about as many as there are residents
in the Village of Lloyd Harbor
on LI’s Gold Coast — a drop of nearly
3 percent from the year prior.
While the numbers are heading in
a positive direction, the local trend
comes as New York State’s homeless
population is on the rise and ranks
second nationwide after California,
with more than 91,000 in shelters or
on the streets.
But as the Press has previously
reported, the statistics, while
valuable, are often lower
than in reality. That’s
because when the
U.S. Department of
Housing and Urban Development
(HUD) coordinates the annual homeless
census — known as the point-intime
count — volunteers, despite
their best efforts, inevitably miss
those who are hospitalized, jailed,
institutionalized, those who refuse
to identify themselves as homeless,
or those who simply can’t be found.
Of course, not all those who wind up
homeless have the same circumstances.
As a former security guard, Edmonson
is perturbed to be in a shelter
with parolees and sex offenders. But
that’s still a better temporary situation
than those who don’t qualify
for emergency shelter because they
lack an eviction notice since their last
home was in an illegal apartment, or
they work nights and can’t follow the
curfew without losing their job, or
suffer from the disease of addiction
that makes it difficult to be sober
before getting a bed. Tent cities in
woodlands along local parkways
are sometimes where those who fall
through the cracks wind up.
A lack of affordable housing
is both the leading cause
of homelessness and an
issue discussed ad
nauseam by local
political leaders.
Suffolk officials
were touting
a new affordable
housing
project for
homeless
veterans
as this story went to press. The
severity of the problem can be illustrated
in LI’s network of about 100
homeless shelters.
“We have folks living in shelters
with Section 8 vouchers,” says Greta
Guarton, LMSW, executive director
Long Island Coalition for the Homeless,
an Amityville-based nonprofit.
“They are really, really struggling
to find landlords who are willing to
accept their vouchers. That’s a major
challenge.”
PARALLEL HUNGER TRENDS
The mixed bag of progress and persistent
challenges facing LI’s homeless
mirrors issues facing the larger
population of those who classify as
food insecure, which includes those
without roofs over their heads.
The number of Long Islanders who
don’t know where their next meal
is coming from is also trending
downward, experts say. There was
a 4.8 percent decrease in people
going hungry in Nassau and Suffolk
last year, according to estimates in
the latest Map the Meal Gap report
by Feeding America, the nation's
largest domestic hunger relief organization.
But Long Island Cares,
Inc.—The Harry Chapin Food Bank,
one of LI's two major nonprofit food
banks, notes that the stats, which
include 155,150 local residents
receiving Supplemental Nutrition
Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly
known as food stamps, or
other government assistance, is
only a fraction of those visiting the
more than 500 soup kitchens and
food pantries on LI.
“Despite the encouraging decrease,
Long Island Cares reports a 10 percent
increase in the number of visits
to its three satellite locations in Freeport,
Lindenhurst, and Huntington
Station, an increase also reported
by many of our larger member
agencies,” reports Paule
Pachter, chief executive
officer of
Long Island
“We have folks living in shelters with Section
8 vouchers,” says Greta Guarton.
A lack of affordable housing
is the leading cause of homelessness.
(Getty Images)
/LONGISLANDPRESS.COM
