What Next: The Unhoused Don’t Want to “Go Back to Normal”

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Slate Podcasts

News, News Commentary, Politics

4.6 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 19 July 2021

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

At the height of the pandemic, New York city put up some of its homeless population in the city’s empty hotels. Now, as the city comes back to life, the program is ending -- but the city’s unhoused population doesn’t want to go “back to normal” Guest: Jacquelyn Simone, Senior Policy Analyst for the Coalition for the Homeless. If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Dear Prudence—and you’ll be supporting the work we do here on What Next. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to help support our work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Earlier this month, a modified school bus pulled up in front of a hotel in Midtown, Manhattan,
0:11.5	and a standoff began.
0:16.8	The bus was there to take homeless New Yorkers away.
0:20.2	Those who knew it would be happening had dreaded this moving day at the four points on
0:24.5	40th Street.
0:25.8	It was a temporary home for the last year for dozens of men.
0:30.2	These men, they've been living in the hotel, rent-free, courtesy of the city for more than
0:34.9	a year.
0:36.2	All part of the program to help stop the spread of COVID by keeping them out of congregate
0:41.0	shelters.
0:42.7	Now that infection rates are down and vaccines are available, the city has been trying to
0:47.2	move these men.
0:48.2	And some have refused to go.
0:59.7	For some of New York's unhoused, social distancing has come with an unanticipated upside, key
1:06.8	cards and cable TV and private bathrooms and hotels that were suddenly empty of tourists.
1:13.9	It is not hard to imagine why they wouldn't want to leave.
1:18.2	I definitely spoke with many people who reported that being in the hotel gave them greater
1:24.8	peace of mind.
1:25.8	They weren't as worried about getting sick from the virus, but they also felt like they
1:31.9	had more privacy to just be a human being and to get their life back on track in whatever
1:37.8	way seemed most appropriate for them.
1:40.2	Jacqueline Simone is a senior policy analyst for the Coalition for the Homeless, a court-appointed
	...

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