Aug 14 2026

8/14/25

 

    The cats had just woken me up when a message from a long ago client showed up.  “I need your help.  It’s an emergency. So I just got the news that Manny unfortunately passed away this morning,” he wrote, including a picture of another long ago client.  “How do I go about finding his body?” Over the years, I have dealt with enough of these situations that I have a strategy. “Start with the person who told you,” I wrote back.  “Do they know where he died? How do they know he died?”  Once in a while, rumors of a death turn out to be inaccurate so I always start with the source.  “The police came to Angelica’s house and told her,” he said, naming another long ago client.  He explained that the police woke her up at 4am and she froze from the shock and didn’t get much information. “She thinks it was in Manhattan,” he added.  “Start with the Manhattan Medical Examiner then,” I told him.  It was two hours until the next message – “thank you, I found him.”

    I am often struck by how much the young people I work with remain in each other’s lives, even decades later.  Having lost their own families, the bonds they form as they create their families of choice are deep.

    The next call comes as I am standing on the steps, about to open the church door.  It’s the Very Sick client, who in a fit of frustration signed himself out of the hospital against medical advice yesterday.  We weren’t sure he’d actually be able to get himself home, but he is nothing if not determined and got himself in a cab and then got someone on the block to go in his apartment and fetch his wheelchair.  “I went to see my doctor,” he said, which was unexpected.  He hasn’t been out of the hospital long enough to see his doctor in months.  “And I scheduled my dialysis.”  “That’s great,” I told him, glad to hear that he is making an effort to deal with his health.  “I’m bored and lonely,” he said.  “I want to go to Housing Works.”  “If you make an appointment with them, Medicaid transportation should take you,” I told him, sending him the phone number.

    Later, I was on my to do some banking for another client when he called again.  “How do I get on the kidney list?” he asks.  There is no way they would give him a transplant, not with his history of noncompliance, but I wasn’t going to get into all that standing on the corner of 9th ave and 41st Street.  “You’d need a doctor for that, a kidney specialist,” I explained.  “I really want to get out of this wheelchair,” he said and I realized that he thought a kidney would help him do that.  “It’s not the kidneys that are keeping you from walking,” I told him.   “When you were in the ICU you were lying down for so long that your leg muscles got weak.  You need to build them back up with physical therapy. You could ask your doctor for a referral.”

    On top of all the medical crap, his building is trying to evict him.  He has HASA, which provides rent subsidies for people with HIV, but because he is on disability he is supposed to pay 30% of his income as rent and they cover the rest. This is a problematic policy because SSI checks are mostly $800-$900 per month, which is not enough to live on.  If you take a third of that for rent, and then still expect people to pay their utilities, phone bill, etc. it creates an impossible situation.  So he just didm’t pay his 30% and now the new management has noticed his $7k in arrears and started eviction proceedings.

     He couldn’t go to court while he was in the hospital, so I started calling  Bronx Housing Court to inform them.  I called all their numbers, day after day, and they just went to voicemail.  Finally, Jeff S., a lawyer I work with at Legal Aid’s HIV services unit, sent me a link to a webform for requesting reasonable accommodations in housing court.  I submitted it on 7/31, got an automated confirmation, but day after day went by with no response.  Then Jeff gave me a number for the ADA liaison, and I got an actual person, but she didn’t seem to know what I meant when I told her about the web form, said she would email me some forms, and went back and forth repeating my email.  I never got the forms.  Today I called again and got a woman who was able to look up the web form and discovered that it had accidentally gone to the box for NY County instead of the Bronx.  She also checked on the missing email and discovered that it had been sent to me at “alternatives” rather than “new alternatives.”  When I finally got the email, I was baffled to find that it contained instructions for filling out the web form I had already submitted.  “Email them back,” said Jeff.  I did, explaining that I had already submitted the web form and that I wanted a response about the accommodations.  The response was quick – it said “call” and gave a number, not even an indication of what the number was to.  Jeff was incensed by this point.  I’ll call Monday.

    After all of that, I was relieved when the day ended.  I got off in Bay Ridge, got on the elevator to the street with a woman in an MTA uniform, and we were both alarmed when the elevator started making a strange groaning noise as it approached the sidewalk level.  Then the door opened a few inches and forcefully slammed closed, and it kept doing that over and over.  “That looks like an error code,” I said to the MTA employee, pointing at the electronic screen.  She pressed the emergency button and music started to play.  Eventually a man picked up and she explained, with the slamming door audible in the background.  “I’m sending the fire department,” he said.  I was grateful the door was opening a little so fresh air was coming in.  Those elevators get hot.  While we waited, she pulled a baton from her bag and stuck it in the door.  The door opened enough that we could get out.  I headed home and left her waiting for the fire department.

    As I got to my house, I heard meowing and Smokey emerged from the hedge.  Once again the cats had busted through the taped up window.  I scooped up his very heavy, rabbit soft body and carried him up the stairs and into the house.  Then I realized that April was also out and tried to get her to come in but she kept dashing away as soon as I got close.  Tired of the shenanigans, I went inside and mixed up some two-part epoxy and applied it to the edges of the missing piece of glass and then pressed it back into place in the frame.  Then I brought a can of food out and as soon as she heard it open, April came running.  I grabbed her and brought her in, earning a hiss as she realized she’d been tricked. 

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