The Picture the Homeless Oral History Project

The Picture the Homeless EAU campaign was began in 2002 and ran until 2005 , when i t became subsumed into the broader work of PTH’s Women and Families committee.

In 2002 PTH began receiving calls from pay phones outside of the EAU . D esperate families were reporting that they were told that they weren’t really homeless and therefore ineligible for shelter, that inside the EAU was overcrowded and rat infested, they were being served moldy food , their children couldn’t attend school and so many other issues .

PTH responded by going to the EAU in the South Bronx, meeting families on the street and in McDonald’s, listening and learning. We began conducting surveys to document what we were hearing.

PTH used direct action, surveys, participatory action research and other forms of documentation, created agitational outreach, street theatre and popular education pieces to amplify homeless families concerns, engaged mainstream media, and directly pressured the Judge who was charged with overseeing compliance by NYC with state and city laws, and ensured that PTH’s recommendations were included in the final report by the Special Master Panel.

The EAU was closed down, and intake services temporarily relocated to the PATH in the South Bronx. While PTH alone did not force the closure of the EAU, PTH’s organizing and supporting homeless families to be visible and to be heard was instrumental in breaking the decades long stalemate which had resulted in the severe abuse of homeless families at the hands of the agency funded to help them.

This zine contains some of the highlights of this work and the thinking behind it, based on oral history interviews with PTH EAU campaign members, staff, allies, archival materials, and public documents.

Tyletha Samuels: Coming to the EAU, having their children with them, and having to stay in there all day, eating a sandwich maybe and then at twelve or one o’clock a.m., waking up to go to a shelter to stay just for one day or two days, and then have to come right back to the EAU. It was just ridiculous bouncing back and forth, back, and forth, back, and forth.

It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t nice. I mean, if a family came from Queens, and they had to go to school… Or had to be put in a shelter in Manhattan, and they was already going to a school in Queens… That was very unfair. How were they going to do that, you know? Or they lived in the Bronx and was going to school, and put in a shelter in Queens. They was displaced.

2002: THE EMERGENCY ASSISTANCE UNIT (EAU)

The Emergency Assistance Unit is located in the South Bronx, and remains the only intake office for all five boroughs where families with children and pregnant women apply to enter the NYC shelter system .

Taking the train to the EAU from Judson Memorial Church to the South Bronx, most families would only speak with PTH down the street or around the corner and far away from the EAU itself , for fear of retaliation. Even elected officials were prohibited from entering the building. Nor were families allowed to leave the building without a pass, for fear of being “logged out” and starting over in their applications for shelter. PTH met women with orders of protection covered in bruises who had been told by EAU staff that they could “go back home” , and others who had been told dozens of times that they were ineligible and not really homeless .

F amilies had to remain in the EAU all day and night unless transported by school bus to an “overnight placement . ” PTH created a series of events and agitational flyers based on what we were learning through conversations and surveys with homeless families .

PTH organized a Mother’s Day celebration in 2002, up the street from the EAU at Hostos Community College to create a space for families to talk about what they wanted to do about conditions in the EAU, and to “develop together an action plan . ” Ongoing meetings were held in a park around the corner, in the McDonalds up the street and the PTH office.

EAU Mother’s Day Flyer in Spanish: