Picture the Homeless

There is a cloud of indifference hovering over New York City, but Picture the Homeless, a grassroots group of homeless folks organizing for justice and respect, is poking a long protest stick deep into its cumulus belly in the hopes of emptying a deluge of awakening onto the citizenry of the Big Apple. The dark and ominous cloud is affordable housing and the lack thereof.

In a sleep-out protest action organized in partnership with groups in over 30 cities nation-wide, on the eve of April Fools’ Day, Picture the Homeless attempted to bring awareness to a sleeping city in the midst of a massive housing crisis. The message: affordable housing is not only a poor-person problem. Landlords are hoarding vacant/abandoned buildings, while local government seems to be playing ‘hot potato’ with the issue at hand. Renters are screaming over the ever escalating price of living in New York.

On 3rd Avenue, just north of 43rd Street, stands a huge abandoned building—a surprising location, considering that it is right in the heart of the city’s affluent business community. Forty homeless people and their allies chose this spot for their protest.


“We are here to bring awareness to the unaffordable housing issue, that there are people sleeping on the streets while there are abandoned buildings like these everywhere and in all the boroughs” said PTH press spokesman Roosevelt Orphee, as he pointed out the numerous unlit or cinder blocked windows of the building. Aside from stores occupying the ground floors of this vast expanse of building on this side, all the floors from 43rd and 44th street were empty—five buildings with at least five floors each.


“This is in the spirit of the sit-ins from the Civil Rights Movement,” Roosevelt said. “But despite all the progress that was made in that era, the atrocities facing people of color today are even more extreme—you have tens of thousands of people living in shelters here in NYC, and 90% of them are African-American or Latino! Are they trying to run us out of New York?”

The sad fact is that the city has whipped out the card of Eminent Domain in trying to help Columbia University expand into the poorer regions of West Harlem while ignoring vacant buildings in other richer areas of the city. In short, Eminent Domain is only used to displace the poor. “Too many skilled persons are decaying in Homeless shelters in need of housing and jobs” continued Mr. Orphee, “We do not want your handout; we want jobs. And in our Housing and Jobs Platform, we provide answers and solutions.”



The Mayor won reelection by riding on the carpet of Quality of Life, but New Yorkers are starting to realize that Quality also means the evaporation of low income and affordable rents. The night’s event helped to prove a few points:

• The hoarding of vacant/abandoned buildings doesn’t occur only in the poorer neighborhoods where the population is predominantly people of color.
• Civilians do not find Homeless persons distasteful and are sympathetic to our plight.
• People are very concern over the lack of affordable housing.
• Activism is not for the feint of heart; it is not a spectator sport.

“I am sharing a two bedroom apartment with two others girls, and next month we will be paying $3,250,” groaned a waitress who chose not to be named. “This is crazy and if it wasn’t for the help I get from mom, I would be right here with you folks, Homeless and destitute”

There is a cloud hovering over NYC and it is the fact that Homeless persons are being criminalized for sleeping outdoors while landlords of these buildings are celebrated at tea parties, rubbing elbows with elected officials, knocking whiskey glasses filled with antipathy, and sharing contempt for the disenfranchised.

Scores of passer- bys stopped first to satisfy curiosity, and then to add lamentations to the burning bonfire of dissatisfaction over the affordable housing issues.

If the response of the night’s action is an indication, the same intentional plan of gentrification—the taking of the Poor’s place of dwelling—will lead to the unification of a city presently divided by economics and race. People are pissed off at the obvious move and malice against poorer neighborhoods where gentrification is more prevalent. Good and decent folks are coming to the realization that they are playing into the Mayor’s band-aid plan of displacing communities instead of forcing landlords to renovate vacant buildings, and providing decently affordable housing.



As a result of “quality-of-life” laws, Homeless people face arrest every day for non-criminal offenses. Organizers of the protest linked these prejudicial policies with the failure of the city to provide housing for people. “They say I like sleeping in the park,” said Picture the Homeless member John Jones, “but what they fail to understand is that if I had someplace to go, I’d be there.”

Gentrification is a discriminatory and unjust attempt by the city to spruce up poor neighborhoods; even local politicians admit to its failure. New tenants who move into these communities do not interact with long time residents. With local officials influence, the new residents send their kids to other schools out side the district; they do not attend the churches, and buy from the bodegas. All but the same few stay away from community board meetings, and are absent from residents’ meetings as well. They treat their new apartments merely as sleeping spots. Whether it is out of fear or guilt is unknown because they never stop long enough to dialogue.

Pedestrians’ dialogues with the protesters showed potential for a union against the hypocrisy that is evident in the Mayor’s attitude towards the important issue of affordable housing. “I do not feel it is right that we still have buildings like these in any neighborhood” said a sympathetic passerby.



“We first heard about it when I got an email from www.tothestreets.org, probably through our relationship with the National Coalition for the Homeless who was a co-sponsor of the event, we decided (of course!) to be strategic and not just sleep outside but link it to our campaigns. A lot of really great PTH people worked really hard on it and now I feel a lot of momentum for other things that need to be done” said Lynn Lewis, Director of Picture the Homeless.

To too many, these vacant/abandoned buildings are merely dark superficial spots on a shining/thriving metropolis called the Big Apple—an apple that is still the greatest city on earth. These blemishes are irritable but ignorable nuisances they think. PTH has disproved that supposition. These abandoned buildings go to the rotten core of our democracy. The problem is worst in the poorest of our neighborhoods, but nowhere is safe.



Homeless folks went to sleep on hard concrete and woke up transformed into demigods of activism, Che Guevara resurrected. They were ready to get arrested for the cause—committed Homeless kamikazes determined and civic minded.

As weary-eyed protesters awoke on the shining morning of this April Fools’ Day, it was clear that the joke was on New Yorkers who still believe that politicians are on their side. But for one night, the wall between civilians and the Homeless was ignored or dismantled.

“No one wants to be in a shelter,” said Picture the Homeless member Turhan White. “Do you have to go through a metal detector to get into your apartment? Do you have someone in your house telling you what time you have to go to bed? There are hundreds of these buildings that have been empty for 20 years or more, and you have lots of skilled laborers living in shelter because there are no jobs. Why can’t they fix up these buildings? That would give us jobs, and give us a place to live.”

Catchy chants and rants echoed into the Manhattan night: Empty buildings don’t make sense; what we need is affordable rent/Greedy landlords steal and rob; fix these buildings, give us jobs. Empty buildings are a crime; landlords need to do some time.

Sam J. Miller, organizer of PTH Housing Committee ecstatically said “……this is a pretty amazing example of where we are at now and how we have a lot of people who are willing to step up and do the hard works to make an event like this really work. A bunch of us were ready to risk arrest, and we were tight and organized enough that the cops didn’t mess with us. So bring it on, bring on the next one!”



The star of the night was Roosevelt Orphee with his movie star Tyrese looks and easy smile. With his mentor, Jean Rice, on the sidelines proudly looking on, Roosevelt dazzled the media with his knowledge of the issues and his commitment to eliminating them.

Although the action’s location was kept secret—we didn’t want to roll up on the spot and find a bunch of police pens waiting for us; PTH leaders stated emphatically that they refused to be penned in—we got a call the morning of the action from the NYPD, asking “what they could do for us.” Police top brass admitted to their monitoring of PTH website, but they were pleasant through the protest.

Original text by Joey Kemp.