Observations

Today I was schlepping my way through the hot, muggy day whem I encountered a pair of teen girls sitting on the church steps. It was well before client hours, so I gave them the usual instructions to sit on the other steps, which are not an active doorway and then started searching for my keys. "Are you part of this?" asked one of the girls, pointing to the New Alt sign on the door. It was hot out there, so I let them in and handed them over to Danny to get some food while I got settled. Once they were upstairs in my quiet, sweaty office, the story came out. They are a lesbian couple, 15 and 16 years old, both had taken off from abusive homes, and they wanted to stay together. When I heard their ages, my heart sank. Below a certain age, there is no way to house teens without at least contacting ACS, and below 16, the youth shelters can't even take them in, they have to be placed by child welfare. Foster parents who want teens are few and far between, so most teen...

Last week, on a blazing hot day, I ducked out of work early to head down to Foley Square for the Good Trouble protest. I had written on FB that I would be there if I could get away from clients - 5pm on a workday is tough since we have client hours until 6pm. Ben replied that I should bring the clients and continue counseling on the way, and that's literally what happened. Only one client decided to come along, a trans guy in his 20s. On the way, we decided to stop for beverages, and he picked a slurpee flavored 7-11 brand drink, with a brightly colored label clearly designed to appeal to kids, It was 2 for 1, so he grabbed a second one, and I got a seltzer, and being the grown up, I paid for both. I felt even more parental when he handed me his extra drink to stow in my bag (and then later on handed me the empty bottle since there wasn't a nearby trash can). We made our way through the gathering activists, saying hi to people I knew all along the way. "This is...

Sometimes people show up at New Alt who are too old for the program but my staff remember when they were in the same position, and sometimes they bring them up to see me anyway so that I can figure out where to send them. Yesterday it was the first client of the day, a gay asylum seeker in his 30s from Venezuela. He explained that he had been in a relationship with a man who was controlling and abusive, and he had to leave with nowhere to go. NYC does not have an LGBTQ domestic violence shelter, and the system is really not set up to accomodate male survivors. It's hard even for a single woman to get into a DV shelter, because a lot of the units are for women with children, and there are nowhere near enough to meet demand. I couldn't refer him to Marsha's the LGBTQ shelter because they only take people up to age 35. After 35, there is no LGBTQ specific shelter. So I had to send this gentle, soft-spoken man who was eagerly telling me about his work as a chef and how he ...

I am sitting at my desk, sweating in my unair-conditioned office, exchanging texts in Spanish with a migrant client, R., when I see the results come in. The Senate passed the big ugly bill 51 to 50. Vance had to break the tie. I’m really disappointed in Senator Murkowski. I thought she had more sense than that. I know they brought over with things for her state, but surely she can see the bigger picture. For once, Susan Collins did the right thing after disappointing us so many times. When we were interrupting Vought, she sounded genuinely fed up with this administration, especially on the issues of public broadcasting and PEPFAR and instead of saying something dismissive or hostile as we were being taken out, she said "people feel passionate about this." This thing is such a disaster for everyone, but particularly our clients. Cuts to food assistance, Medicaid and housing are literally cuts to everything they rely on to stay alive. We already didn’t have enough of anythin...