The fine novelist Jennifer Egan spent a year or so hanging out with unhoused New Yorkers and the people diligently working to create and maintain solutions to chronic poverty and homelessness. The result is an extraordinary piece of reporting published in this week’s New Yorker. She focuses particularly on one supportive housing project in Brooklyn that has shown considerable success in managing the physical, medical, and mental-health needs of its tenants. Egan’s compassionate, clear, human attention is exemplary. One of several people she tracks over time is a vivacious woman named Ileasha whose rough life (including losing a foot in a subway train accident) landed her in a wheelchair but who was excited to be photographed for the article and then disappeared. Months later, Egan learns she died of an overdose the day before the scheduled photo shoot.
Key passage: “In a broader sense, I know what happened to Iishea Stone: a luminous and extraordinary woman was failed repeatedly—by her family’s pathologies, by poverty, and by a social safety net that couldn’t seem to catch her. Had Iishea grown up with the advantages I had, she might have accomplished anything. Instead, she suffered acutely and slipped away so invisibly that, thus far, the Kelly does not know what was done with her body. How many Americans are we losing this way? How can we—the wealthiest nation in human history—tolerate those losses? The fact that we can, and do, despite knowing that it’s wrong, is what is meant by the moral cost of homelessness.”
The article, “From Homelessness to a Room of One’s Own,” is long, beautifully written, compelling, sad, at times enraging, upsetting and inspiring. I so appreciated the love and intelligence that went into producing it. You can read the entire piece online here.
another eye opens 