A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words
We all look like one happy family, and we are, but it has not always been that way for our friend John, who lost his job when he was 60 years old, couldn’t pay rent working in restaurants and found himself homeless in 2003. John is 78 years old and had been homeless until recently, for 18 years.
I started volunteering regularly at the Chelsea outreach of City Relief in October and the advantage of being a regular volunteer is that it feels like a community of belonging and friendship, not only with staff and other volunteers but also (and most importantly to me) with our friends on the street.
December 28th, 2020 was the first time I saw a regular visitor to our outreach, John, in his “street home” in Midtown on the corner of 8th Avenue. I offered him a bag of nuts (it was all I had) and cycled away shocked that this is where and how he lived. Until this moment, he was a kind, quiet and polite elderly person, who came to get soup, bread, masks and socks. And now all I saw was a huge injustice of a system gone so wrong and was shocked that his situation had been acceptable and he was living like that.
The feeling of shock stirred something up. We had to do something. I had read of families in the UK who had opened their homes to refugee families - perhaps we could do something like that here? This led to an idea - “Adopt a Grandad”. I mentioned it immediately to Cayce (I would not be doing any of this without my partner in One Always Matters and co-volunteer) and Josiah (who has fought tirelessly for our friends on the street for over 10 years) on January 18th.
After two months of not seeing John, and hoping that he had been placed in a homeless hotel, John came to the outreach on March 17th with his arm in a cast (from shoulder to hand). He had been beaten with a wooden slat in the middle of the night while he was sleeping on a bench. Three days later One Always Matters raised over $2400 to get John a new start. We had no idea what that would look like but we hoped and believed that it would come together. And it did. On April 15th, through City Relief and their community partners, John was placed into transitional housing in midtown east so he now had somewhere warm and safe to stay. But this transition to an unfamiliar neighbourhood after 20 years on the streets of midtown west and no family or community was tough. John went for a short walk and got lost and ended up back on the street for 3 days. When we found John back on the streets of midtown west, we organised a GPS tracker and flip phone so he would never spend another night on the street. John spent almost every single day with us in our home and we ubered him back and forth from his housing. We organized for John to get prescription glasses and when the weather got warmer, John insisted on walking 43 blocks and 8 avenues (this took 2 hours each way) to us and back to his housing every evening.
With a GPS tracker, a flip phone, and our amazing doorman who just went with the flow, John began to belong. With the support of family, close friends and City Relief, who provided real practical help and guidance, and propped me up emotionally, we took one day at a time.
On Saturdays after volunteering at City Relief, we would all meet for lunch, and John would join us. Not only did he have Paul, Simeon, Lola and I, he now had a community. If this was not miraculous enough, on June 22nd, I took John for a doctor’s appointment to a senior residence FIVE BLOCKS from our home and that afternoon he was accepted into this new home and we moved John on June 24th.
It took less than 3 MONTHS from the time we raised the money to this. A more typical timeline would have been 2 years. It was more than I could ever have hoped for and a timeline that is unheard of. John still has no ID, funds he cannot access because he can’t open a bank account with no ID, but he has a family, a community, meals, a beautiful room, loving staff, cooked meals brought to his room, the New York Times delivered daily and an amazing case worker who I work with almost daily to get John back on track.
The dates are significant because if we had set this timeline in advance, it would have been deemed impossible. My learning from this - love, have compassion and empathy, keep going when you have no answers but know that this is the right thing to do, reach out for support because there will always be a few that will support your crazy journey, and never put up with anything that does not seem right. Thanks to all of you who participated in this, the idea of “Adopt a Grandad” came to life. John now lives 5 minutes away. He pops in and out of our apartment on a daily basis. We have our routine (John arrives and if I am out, Paul sees the doorman calling which is his cue to let John in, make him a coffee and snack (all whilst on a work call) and then John reads the New York Times and listens to jazz or Frank Sinatra until I get home). Lola (our standard poodle) and Simeon love him and Simeon has a regular companion to watch YouTube “Supercars in London”. There is not a single day that we don’t feel the huge blessing of having his affection, humour and words of wisdom. His best tip - “kiddo, you do too much, you should take it easy”. Now that always makes me chuckle.
Bindia Malhotra