In between beats of thunder, the cars on the congested highway slow, and then stop moving completely. The flood symbol seems to jump out of my Waze app like the devil in Claus’ original Jack In The Box. I think how unprepared I am should a flood actually happen. Another glance at Waze and then I flip on 1010 WINS just to make sure the app is not sending me into the East River instead of averting a flood zone. I’m not a good swimmer.
It’s September 8, 2023 and I’m in my 2019 Elantra on the Bruckner Expressway. I’m driving back from my sister’s house in Long Island to the Westchester Airbnb I’ve been staying in for the past six weeks. Since my eviction I’m trying to stay as far away from Belleville, New Jersey as I can get. Well, at least forty-plus miles away. I calculate: a car moving at 70 on the highway may not be fast enough to break the sound barrier but will be enough to shatter the memory of that N.J. courthouse, its judge and her final judgment for non-payment. I adhere my foot to the gas pedal. Selective amnesia, that’s what I’m gunning for.
Amid the screeching of worn windshield wipers against glass, the newscaster announces the results of the latest economic indicator, US Household Wealth. The report tells us Household Wealth rose for the second quarter to another record high, evidence of our country’s robust financial health. The newscaster wants to know how we listeners feel about that—about how our wealth has grown to record breaking proportions, because he says, “I don’t know about you, but mine hasn’t.”
Well, Mr. Newscaster, neither has mine.
The numbers showed an equal rise of over $2 trillion each in both stocks and real estate prices.
Most recently, fourth quarter’s numbers released on March 7th confirm another record. This time the driver is stocks which surged nearly $5 trillion. It offset a smaller drop in real estate values.
If approximately sixty-one and sixty-five percent of the population own either stocks or real estate, respectively, the other thirty-five percent, or 117 million people do not.
117 million is a lot of people.
For reference, that is about three times more than the number of people living in California, five times more than New York.
Out of that 117 million, 600,500 people in the U.S were counted homeless in 2023; a jump of more than twenty percent compared to prior year 2022.
New York ranks second, capturing nearly 16 percent of the total US homeless population. Only California stands ahead with 27 percent.
With that, New York’s homeless population stands at 37.7 percent.
It’s grievous that our country has turned into a socio-economic oxymoron where US Wealth numbers and homelessness numbers are both at record breaking levels.
No wonder why many of us are not celebrating. Who cares about which direction the stocks are headed when you don’t know where you and your family will be sleeping tonight?
Another contributing factor to our growing disaffection is that the homeless number is higher than 600,500.
There are a couple of reasons for this:
First, the current methodology used to capture data by government agencies like Dept. of Housing and Urban Development or the Census Bureau is faulty. I propose it undercounts the number of homeless population, not intentionally, but because it’s flawed.
Basically, whether using direct or indirect estimation methods, point-in time, unsheltered or sheltered counting methods, transiency is a common side effect of homelessness. It makes the segment difficult to track.
The second reason is the homeless person’s reluctance to be counted.
When I was homeless I shied away from sharing my situation except to family members and one close friend, because I understood the consequences. You get denied housing.
While evictions no longer show up on a person’s credit report, prospective landlords can contact previous landlords for references, as well as use an online tenant screening service.
Another reason is that a portion of the homeless that temporarily stay with friends or families are not counted, but are still technically homeless. They are likely to fluctuate on and off the homeless grid.
***
My membership in the “precariously homeless” club began several years ago. That was April of 2006 when I left my cushy job on Madison Avenue as the co-manager of a hedge fund’s trading desk.
I had to resign; my physical health was deteriorating because of the stress.
In January of 2002 I temporarily lost sight in my left eye during trading hours. A subsequent trip to the hospital and a neurologist visit lead to a Multiple Sclerosis diagnosis and weekly intramuscular injections of an interferon. The side-effects were horrible; imagine having the Flu for a few days each week combined with depression as a chaser.
I went on short-term disability, my eyesight returned, and I returned to work. My world had changed. I had changed.
Then, April 2006 came, and I resigned—as do all traces of the economic calm that characterized the 1990s.
In 2007, a year after I left my job, the “Great Recession” swept in and stayed through 2009. The money that I saved during my time on Wall Street was spent on personal trainers, joining a weightlifting team, and eating healthy. My health recovered; and I remained asymptomatic. In December 2009, with my Doctor’s blessing I stopped the interferon injections.
All I had to do was find another way to make money.
However, in 2023, nearly fifteen years later, and my bank account still hasn’t recovered. I’m not alone.
Neither have the bank accounts of those other 117,000,000 million that don’t own stocks or real estate.
On Sunday, July 23, 2023, I moved to the Airbnb, a cramped, 125 square foot basement “suite” in Westchester, which I rented for two months and eleven days. Two rooms make up the suite (really one room with a thin wall separating it.) There is one bathroom; no shower. There is a toilet which I am forbidden from flushing toilet paper down. And, although I try my best, the black wastebasket next to it is perpetually overflowing. You’d be surprised the sheer quantity of odors a one-hundred square foot room can hold out of spite… I don’t look at the assortment of strange faces I pass on my way to the kitchen or shower on the main floor.
I will tell you I keep that suite in the basement locked. Always.
My friend Jane warns: “You think [the owner] hasn’t gone in there while you were out? I mean, the lock means nothing.”
Even with Jane’s warning, I am shocked when the owner confides that she picked the lock of the guest’s room while they were out “just to check.” The guest had broken a house rule, which amounts to a major crime in an Airbnb. She left one of her sandals on the living room wood floor.
However, there are practical advantages to an Airbnb if you’re homeless: no background credit, criminal, or income checks, no security deposit to put up—ideal for anyone technically homeless who otherwise is unable to meet standard leasing requirements. Although, be prepared to pay exorbitant fees.
My Airbnb “rent” started at $2000. Once moved in, my host changed her mind and raised the monthly rent to $2650. She said she could get more money by charging daily rates rather than monthly rates and didn’t want to “feel resentful”.
Before I secured a room at the Airbnb I was mostly worried about my pets.
The threat of ending up somewhere, while my beloved cats ended up elsewhere, stalked me during those awful few months leading up to my eviction.
I thought of neighbors, several who had come to me in the past on the cusp of their own evictions—usually the night before or day of their desperate departure. Mostly after hours when the talons of economic loss finally eviscerated the last glimmer of hope they had. They pleaded with me to find homes for their soon to be homeless pets. I did; I rehomed their cats, found transport to a refuge for an injured seagull; fed a lost white dove…
I also cast judgments on those same neighbors I helped.
How could they have not seen that coming? How could they risk their own safety and their pets?
And later, how had I not seen this coming?
***
It’s July 5th, 2023, two weeks before my eviction hearing.
The white dove appears in the parking lot behind my old apartment building. The bird is pecking at the pebbles in the dirt, in between the cracked concrete. I dump the two trash bags I’m lugging into the green dumpster and slowly walk back towards the dove. To see if it’s injured. It flies to the roof. The wildlife refuges’ tell me it’s either a lost racing dove or a wedding dove. Either way, they say, it’s doomed. It will starve to death. It wasn’t born outside. It will never survive. I start feeding it and hope for a miracle.
***
It’s Friday July 21, 2023 , two days before my move to the Airbnb using a loan given reluctantly by my employer. It’s a loan I’m grateful for but one that also leaves me feeling diminished. It’s been four days since I’ve seen the white dove. I’m still unsure about leaving the bird food with my neighbor, in case the bird returns… I’m stopped at a light on Belleville Avenue, about a half a mile from the apartment I’m being evicted from. Above me, a flock of pigeons are lined up on a telephone wire. In between the long row of grey feathers is a familiar set of white. The dove has survived so far, and has found friends.
***
COVID-led inflation has brought the housing crisis to the forefront of many lives, but the real monster lay in the unfair zoning laws created decades earlier—around the start of the 20th century. They call it NIMBY (“Not in My backyard”) and many of the zoning laws it inspired over a century ago still retain, at least in part, NIMBY’s original intention: exclusion and racial segregation.
Existing zoning laws, responsible for the housing crisis, have also led indirectly to “legalized’ discrimination within towns, particularly suburbia. It’s also led to an unnatural homogeneity which has caused dangerous levels of intolerance. You only need to look at a news headline to feel the rage.
Last year, Governor Hochol introduced plans to increase affordable housing in New York, but they were met with fierce resistance by local suburban legislators, along with their single-family homeowner constituents. Ultimately, they were abandoned as were watered down proposals introduced afterwards by local officials.
***
Thursday September 28, 2023. I’ve finally pulled the trigger on an apartment in Long Island.
The “Island” is where I grew up; it’s where my family is. The apartment, in Suffolk County, is further east than Nassau County and further away from Manhattan, and from school where I am a student. However, Suffolk has more vacancies than Nassau which makes the rents more palatable.
Money and a dwindling window of time become the deciding factors.
There were a few “hurdles” to clear.
I had to find a co-applicant (which I did). Then apply with the property management company’s “in-house guarantor,” which I also did. Once approved by the guarantor, and their fee was paid (about 60% of one month rent), I paid the landlord their first month rent. Move-in date is set for tomorrow. It pours all day and because of it the landlord will postpone tomorrow’s move-in due to flooding concerns.. After several back-and-forth calls, they put me in the books for Saturday.
Tomorrow will be our last night staying at the Airbnb. While the owner’s boyfriend uses his Shop-Vac to suck up the water that’s flooded the Bnb’s basement area outside the room where we’re staying, my cats and I are dry. Somehow the rain can’t reach us in the small space we’ve been stuck in for the past nine weeks.
Saturday September 30, 2023. Moving day.
With a cat carrier in each hand, I climb the sixteen plush, carpeted stairs to my 805 square foot apartment—double the size of my last apartment. I set the carriers down and inhale the smell of new carpet. I couldn’t have dreamed this one up.
Still I won’t delude myself about dreams. Joy, I learned, is best served, tempered, like a condiment.
In nine months my lease will be up for renewal. That leaves nine months to prepare for the rent increase that is coming (the amount unknown,) as well as another annual payment due the guarantor.
If they’ll still have me.
Who can be certain of anything these days.