Why is sleep for the homeless of New York City so often an unattainable ideal? October 29 rally at City Hall -- for clean private rooms for all those in need call for Sleep Stamps program, just like Food Stamps Joan Harrison's speech: Mayor Bloomberg, tiny army of homeless or formerly homeless people stands here before you, the most despised, dejected, discredited, and vulnerable of the city's poor. Yet somehow in all our downtroddenness we manage to stand here as a battalion to deliver a petition to you signed with a pen by more than two hundred fifty of us, and with a computer by more than one hundred twenty-five—many from other nations. Through this petition we are asking you to abolish the city shelter system in favor of a program of sleep stamps which would be used in the manner of food stamps.

The food stamps program is arguably the only successful part of the otherwise failed New York City homeless system. A program of sleep stamps, as you may already have heard, would provide a clean, private room to any indigent New Yorker or New York family  in need of sleep.  It would completely eliminate the need for street homelessness.  [The petition online is at a target="_blank" href="http://change.org/"  Plug that into Google and you will find it.

Mr. Mayor, as sorry a sight as we may seem, we are not all drug addicts.  We are not all mentally disabled. Yet even those of us who might be characterized that way still need sleep, though sometimes needing a great deal more also. And why is sleep for the homeless of New York City so often an unattainable ideal? On the streets sleep is precarious at best. In drop in centers it is non-existent. At shelters it is possible, if you don't mind dirty sheets or bedbugs by night or by day inedible food, irrational rules, or insensate, tyrannical functionaries pushing you around. Outreach teams seem to want us to believe that if we choose not to go to a shelter there is something wrong with us.  Yet an impartial observer could as easily conclude that there must be something seriously wrong with the New York City shelter system if untold thousands prefer to martyr themselves by sleeping on the streets under the scornful eyes of other New Yorkers rather than to sleep in a shelter bed. Mr. Mayor, I do not know why human beings are put on earth, whether to be tried by a higher court or to fulfill some divine mission.  Yet it be that we are put here to front for thieves. cannot be that we are put here to make greed appear to be generosity.  We are not put here to enhance the devil's script. 

We are all of the same breath as you, and justice is not a subcategory of entertainment. Yet if homelessness is a serious matter both for us and for the city, the city shelter system has proven to be a guarantor of street homelessness.  Its engines of repression seem to feed us to the streets as to a slow moving Minotaur. On the streets we are not so degraded. No team leaders shriek at us there. No psychiatrists define us there. The food is far better there, for many decent people donate to us. Yet on the streets many homeless people are giving up.  Homeless bodies are rotting on the streets. They are present everywhere ;their swollen legs, bleeding and discolored.  And their minds are bleeding.  And they're dying on the streets without a friend or relative to weep for or even bury them. What sort of government allows such an abomination? To what levels of servility are New York's poor to be reduced?

The present system does not befit a free society. With a sleep stamps program, after minimal screening, each of us would be given a card with enough sleep stamps on it for a month, sleep stamps which could be renewed the same way food stamps are, for as long as is necessary. We would get the card, go to a room, sleep, wake, leave.  No big deal. Sleep is a biological necessity the same as food.  That fact may seem obvious to you, yet the city homeless system clearly needs to be reminded of it.

Picture the Homeless has shown that there is enough empty living space in the borough of Manhattan to begin implementing such a program today. There are countless empty hotel rooms, motel rooms, rooms in apartment buildings, office buildings, Y's, convents, churches, and hospitals to begin to provide a temporary clean, private space for every homeless New Yorker or New York family throughout the five boroughs. We would be happy to help with any needed renovating.  I've said that before and I've also said that we would be happy to plant gardens and trees for the surrounding spaces. The interior spaces would be no old welfare hotels such as existed under Mayors Koch and Dinkins because we would not be segregated.  We would be scattered and mixed in with the general population.  There could be ten or twenty-five clean private rooms set aside for us in every eligible residence.  I understand that something similar is already in place in at least one New York City hotel. Yet even there because of intermediary sponsorship& a waiting period and restrictions are imposed. A sleep stamps program would serve the homeless directly.  Special needs would obviously be accommodated somewhat differently.

Mr. Mayor, after our demonstration we will carry the signed petition to your office.  Please respond to Picture the Homeless in a timely manner. Thank you.