At Men's Shelter in Bedford-Stuyvesant, a Room for 532

It was noon at the shelter for homeless men in the Bedford Avenue Armory in Brooklyn. Near the metal detectors at the front door, a young security guard was ousting a man in a too-small camel's-hair coat for the third time.
Men were lined up for lunch in the armory's cavernous main hallway, but no one except Alfonso Howell appeared to notice the incident.

Visitor Refused to Speak

Mr. Howell, who has lived in the shelter for eight months, hectored the shelter's staff for not helping. The man was sick, maybe a mental patient, he shouted.

''They don't want a bunch of derelicts like us around,'' he said.
The man at the door had refused to speak or to sign the register; that meant he could not come in. But eventually someone noticed a plastic band on his wrist, and he was taken to the third floor, where the Bedford-Stuyvesant Commu-nity Mental Health Center has an office.

While the man hunched over a desk, sleeping, a psychiatric social worker read his wristband, made a call and learned the man suffered from Alzheimer's disease. He had walked away from a nursing home three days before.

The short-lived drama was barely a beat in the rhythms of a day for the 800 men who take shelter at the armory, at Bedford and Atlantic Avenues in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section, formerly the home of a National Guard unit. It is one of 19 city shelters that house more than 9,000 men and women; the city plans to build 20 more shelters with an addi-tional 7,000 beds.

The men call the shelter ''the Atlantic.'' And staying there, many of them say, is much like being in the ocean: being basically alone, pushed and pulled by unrelenting currents.

Others liken the shelter to a prison, one where the staff calls them clients rather than inmates. ''Rikers, just outside the walls,'' says one who stays there, 34-year-old Robert White.

If their lives before coming to the armory could be said to be marginal, there is little change inside, as the men try to live in the margins of the shelter's rhythms and routines.

''A person could get too comfortable in here, or lazy,'' says one man in the line waiting for lunch. ''I've been here for four months and I always try to do some hustling out in the streets every day just to feel right and alive, even if it's just going over to the cheese lines.''

Meals are prepared at the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens Village and trucked to the shelters. This day the food was on time, so shortly after noon the security guards allowed the men in line to trickle down to the basement cafe-teria in groups of five or six. Lunch was two slabs of liverwurst, hash brown potatoes, four slices of bread, a piece of fruit and milk.

The veterans of shelter life carried their own salt and pepper; no seasonings arrive with the meals. They also carried wax paper to wrap leftovers.

Searched for Plastic Utensils
''It might not be worth a damn now, but tonight after 10 o'clock somebody will pay 50 cents for this,'' said one man as he wrapped a sandwich.

As lunch ended around 1:30, the men left the cafeteria. Staff members patted them down in a search for the plastic utensils. Most went out into the streets. Others went to the second-floor offices of the shelter's social services staff for assistance, played cards or pool at tables lining the open hallways, or watched television.

The sleeping areas are off limits until 5 P.M. They include the drill floor, the size of a football field, where 532 beds are arranged in long rows. There are seven other sleeping areas. To many of the residents, life in the shelter is dominated by rules. The men must stand in line for breakfast even when they have an early job appointment, they must wait in line to get an authorization from a social worker to get carfare to go to the job, then they must wait on another line for the carfare.

Often they must bring a signed letter that they are working in order to get a bed reserved for them without signing up early in the afternoon.

The rules ''drain people so that they just give up,'' said Phillip, the chairman of a shelter clients advisory committee that was formed a month ago. The 12 Caseworkers Can't Handle All Needs The committee was suggested by the shel-ter's director, Frank Gonzalez, when the city set a new curfew for shelters: 10 P.M., instead of midnight.

''There was almost a riot,'' he said, and so he urged the men to pick a committee to present their grievances.

Phillip, who is 30 years old and has been in the shelter for a month, said he had sought the help of men who had experience in other institutions. The committee's president and vice president, for example, have both spent time in prison.
Mr. Gonzalez said he agreed with complaints from the men that the shelter does not provide enough assistance. With a staff of 12 caseworkers, he said, he cannot provide all the help he would like to men who need medical referrals, drug and alcohol detoxification, jobs and apartments.

That night was chicken night, and so by 5 P.M. men returned to line up for the shelter's most popular meal. It is also the time when the ''bed rosters'' are put out to be signed to reserve a bed for a night and an area is set up for transients arriving for the first time.

There are two lines at this hour. One is for the nearly 200 men who are in the shelter's Work Employment Program. For $12.50 a week, they work 20 hours cleaning up the shelter, cleaning parks, senior-citizen centers or subway stations. The men call it ''slave labor,'' but they are the first allowed downstairs for dinner at 6.
Some 750 men signed in and were served dinner. The seats refilled as quickly as they were emptied. There were ar-guments and shouting over little things that seemed to involve large things like ''respect,'' ''manhood'' and ''rights.''

''You have to have a strong head in a place like this,'' said Keith Irving, the advisory council president. ''You see things and you don't. You deal with it or you leave it alone.''

After dinner and another pat-down, men streamed in and out of the shelter. Some left and returned apparently in-toxicated or high on drugs. There are plenty of liquor stores nearby and, according to shelter's staff and the men, there are crack houses within a block.

A disheveled man in a brown coat staggered and weaved up to the sign-in table three times, sent back each time into subfreezing weather because of the bottle of wine he tried to bring in. Finally the bottle was empty and he was al-lowed to stumble up the steps to his bed. Ten-Cent Cigarettes From the 'Loosie-Men'

On the upper floors, the card games and chess games had resumed and the television room was packed with more than 60 men. The ''loosie-men'' and other entrepreneurs were circulating.

The loosie-men sell loose cigarettes, 10 cents apiece. One carried his goods in a leather briefcase that also con-tained a notebook for listing those who got things on credit. Each has his own territory in the shelter and sticks to it.

''My territory is the drill floor,'' said the loosie-man with the briefcase. He also carried a knapsack and two plastic grocery bags. ''And tonight I have danishes that will go for a quarter apiece.''

In the third-floor recreation room, 27-year-old James Rawle, a resident, was intently painting a portrait from a pho-tograph that he said was a ''commission'' from one of the security guards. It was to be an anniversary gift for his wife.

''I'm charging him $60 and the materials alone cost me $20, but these guards don't make that much money,'' he said, shrugging off the small profit.

At the sign-up tables on each floor, the bed rosters were filling up. By 7:30 P.M., 410 men had signed up to reserve their beds. By 9:30, only 41 of the 800 beds were unclaimed. Not a Place To Be Self-Righteous The admission of drug use or alcoholism among the men was notable not only for its frequency but for how quickly it was proffered.

''You see, this is sort of the bottom,'' theorized Arthur Brown, a psychiatric social worker, ''so it's O.K. to reveal it. Given the notion that no one here can afford to be very self-righteous and saintly about what they do, why not?''

At 10 P.M., when the doors were closed, there were only 11 empty beds and two men left outside pleading through the closed doors to get in. Another man sat in the area for transients.

In expectation of a big demand - it was the first freezing night in the city - 25 additional beds had been set up. But by midnight, when the lights went out, a van had brought only four additional men to the Atlantic and there were seven beds still empty.

At 6 A.M. the shelter staff walked about the vast floor of the armory shouting for the men to wake up.

Two hours later some had left, but 530 remained, lining up for a breakfast of eggs, cold cereal, bread and milk. The truck from Creedmoor arrived on time and so breakfast was at 8 A.M. as scheduled.

The clothes room was due to open and the work stipends would be handed out. Bill Brown, a muscular weight lifter who runs the Work Employment Program, was filling out the stipend authorizations, giving extra work to those men who pleaded to make up the hours they had missed.

Robert White worked the door of the clothes room, letting in two men at a time, playing the role of salesman for the five-minute ''shopping sprees'' while keeping an eye out for the foreman of a construction crew who owed him money for work he had done in the shelter ''off the books.''

Alfonso Howell waited for a friend to ''go out and take care of some business - street business.'' The television room was as crowded as the night before and some of the same solitary figures from the day before stood motionless in the hallways and stairwells. A Dispute Over Pay, Then a 'Shopping Spree'

At 10 A.M. a suprise locker inspection was announced, partly because of complaints of thefts. Staff members had large metal cutters with which to cut the locks of residents who were not there. There was an uproar, a discussion and it was decided that the search would be only of the lockers of those present. Just enough time had passed for anything stolen to be moved, one administrator observed.

Back in the clothes room, two aides checked the men's clothing authorization slips, on which a caseworker had specified just what they were entitled to receive from the room of donated, used clothes. For some it was just the regular ''care package'' containing a set of new underwear, two pairs of socks, toothbrush, toothpaste, disposable razor, deodor-ant and a woven belt.

Mr. Gonzalez had returned from a meeting with H.R.A. officials in charge of the shelter program as the men were lining up for lunch and was optimistic about getting the new caseworkers he needed.

Mr. White had told him of the problem he had getting paid by the foreman, and Mr. Gonzalez was perturbed about the incident.

The foreman came into his office. The foreman said it was not his fault, that the money had been promised by ''an unreliable subcontractor'' he had hired and that he had warned Mr. White that he might not get paid. Mr. Gonzalez stared at him, asked him why he would use ''unreliable subcontractors'' and then reminded him that as shelter director he had to vouch for the completion of the work before all of the money was paid to the company. The foreman promised that Mr. White would get the money by early the following week.

''We have to deal with all sorts of things,'' said Mr. Gonzalez, after the foreman left. ''Guys depressed and into sub-stance abuse, loss of families, guys with no sense of where they fit in, and guys like Robert who trust the system and then this happens and they go back to mistrusting everything.''

Outside the office, Robert White said he was pleased and returned to his duties in the clothes room, and to take his own five-minute ''shopping spree'' for some slacks and a coat.

''Hey, it ain't Saks, but what do you expect?'' he said.


Courtesy of the NY Times
November 19, 1986, Wednesday, Late City Final Edition

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