This is How New York’s Record-Breaking Homeless Population Celebrates Thanksgiving

[eridani]

http://www.vice.com/read/this-is-how-new-yorks-record-breaking-homeless-population-celebrates-thanksgiving-1127

But the grim reality is that Thanksgiving 2014 represents a landmark occasion for New York City's poor. Gotham is ​now experiencing ​Great Depression levels of homelessness, with ​nearly 60,000 humans sleeping inside shelters, on the streets, or down below in subway stations every single night—around 25,000 of them children. The numbers represent a culmination of the past five years, in which New York's banking and other major industries have done great even as poverty has accelerated.

Last year, the Bowery ​Mission, one of the oldest soup kitchens and shelters in the city for single adults, housed 200 people a night during the deathly cold of the polar vortex. But this past week, in the midst of a November that had ​people second-guessing Mother Nature, the Mission gave out 225 meals and beds to 128 homeless individuals. "This is a surprisingly high number this early in the season," spokesperson James Winans told me during a tour of the Mission. "And it is definitely alarming."

[inanna]

1. Thanks for posting this.

It's heartbreaking - but I urge everyone to read it.

[olddots]

2. record highs for the stock market

There is something very wrong with this picture.

[appalachiablue]

3. Good to know this, awful as it is and I believe it. So much for M$M coverage-

[Enthusiast]

4. The right wing media narrative is

it's Obama's fault. And these people are lazy moochers. End of the right wing media narrative story. Assholes.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

5. that's about it, yes.

[Dont call me Shirley]

10. Or if you're down on your luck somehow you deserve it because you didn't work hard enough.

Or if your sick it's your fault. If you don't have health insurance you just weren't smart enough. If you don't have. Basic needs met you're just not fucking blessed enough.

I'm at a Thanksgiving with nut bags who think and talk out loud like that. So I'm holed up here in my room alone.

Actually I feel thankful I have a warm room and a Thanksgiving dinner. These are things judgmental people don't get.

[Enthusiast]

12. I'm with you.

The nut bags do not understand how quickly they could be thrust into bad circumstances. Of course the right wing media fosters their ignorance.

[JDPriestly]

6. K&R.

The stock market soars. The homeless shelters are busy.

Where is justice?

When so few have so much, why can't every homeless person be given shelter?

[ReRe]

7. My sister visits NYC...

... often now, as she has two new grandbabies there. They all bundled up this morning and went to the parade. Called me after they got back home and reiterated what she always says when she goes up there: The poverty is pitiful. Beggars all along the way (which has caused her to carry a wad of bills with her if going on the street). She says it doesn't matter who is the Mayor or who is the President. And it's getting worse and worse all the time.

There's a great big crack going right thru the heart and soul of this society. Oh, the picture on the surface is real pretty, but when you pick up the corner of the picture and look underneath, well, there is no pretty under there. There's no justice under there.

The pretty perceptions are wearing thin.

[IrishEyes]

8. I saw so many homeless people today.

I was coming home from thanksgiving. There were many homeless people sleeping on the benches at the train station and also the subway. It has seemed lately that there are more people than usual. It breaks my heart. I'm broke but I'm going to donate some groceries.

[historylovr]

9. K & R

[Iamthetruth]

11. Every year

I take my two boys down to the homeless shelter to serve thanksgiving dinner, only after we do that do we sit down to our own dinner. It is then that my boys understand how truely fortunate they are.