Homelessness Comes/Came to Sheepshead Bay?

(Photo by Ray Johnson)

A group of friends and I went out for a middle of the night snack at the 24-hour El Greco Diner, having read that it may not be around much longer. We were enjoying the lovely summer weather on our walk home while reminiscing about our Bay, when we noticed a shopping cart filled with assorted paraphernalia being used as a night table and a person tucking himself to sleep on the sidewalk. I suppose the spot that serves as an inviting outdoor sit-down during the day is the best place to be the first on line for a fresh cup of joe at the Coffee Spot Cafe at Sheepshead & Jerome. Incidentally, calls made to the cafe clued us in that the owners and managers are not clued in or are simply highly tolerant of the situation. In any case, no one wanted to speak about it.

My first instinct was to take a picture, but then I thought – how would I feel if I didn’t have a place to live and I was forced to sleep on the street? Would I like to have my photograph posted in a cyberworld newspaper? My personal answer is “no,” but the journalist in me says that I might have snapped the picture right away if my camera had a flash.

Noone in our group remembered seeing area sidewalk homesteaders in the recent past. Back in the comfort of home, a quick internet search reminded me that homelessness has not come to the area for the first time, but came to the area, at least once before with the sad death of a homeless person in the winter of 2000.

Apparently, I’m not the only one taking notice. Timothy Cobb, a Sheepshead Bay resident, wrote in to Sheepshead Bites of what he says is a growing problem:

For the past several months, three homeless men have been living on the sidewalk next to the Sheepshead Bay train station at Voorhies Ave. They sleep spread out on the sidewalk, sit on broken chairs and crates in the junk and waste pile they are making larger every day. When they can stand and move they relieve themselves between the stairs and fence next to the entrance to the station, easily exposing themselves to the large number of people (children) using the station or passing by. If they can’t move, you can see as they lay there the urine stains draining across the sidewalk.

They are becoming more aggressive in their panhandling, sitting and standing in front of the entrance or in the middle of the sidewalk. One man follows people along the sidewalk. They are now walking up to the cars waiting to pick up people. It’s at a point now where mothers walk their children into the street to past or shielded them from the sight of these men.

Sheepshead Bay is my favorite place on earth, and it helps to have a little perspective in remembering that wherever I’m at, it’s a true blessing to have a roof over my head and a place to call my own. But, it appears to me that there’s a growing number in the area who lack even that. Am I alone to think this?