The Last Homeless Man Standing in Times Square

by Josie Raymond · 2010-03-29 17:00:00 UTC
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In New York City, where I live, there are two camps: people old enough, or who've been in New York long enough, to know "the old Times Square," and people young enough, or new enough to the city, to have only experienced "the new Times Square." I'm in the latter. All I know about old Times Square I learned from movies like Midnight Cowboy and Taxi Driver. The new Times Square has a 25,000-square-foot store open til midnight that only sells M&Ms merchandise.

The dirty moviehouses may be gone entirely (it's hard to say, but thanks Rudy Giuliani), but it's pretty clear that the homeless population that once called Time Square home was just shooed away to less touristy corners of the city. Today, New York City still has embarrassingly ineffective homeless services.

The New York Times has found what it says it the last official homeless resident of Times Square. (M&Ms store or not, there are plenty of homeless people passing through Times Square everyday, but I'll go with it.) His name is Heavy, and he has been living in the center of the universe for decades.

Nonprofits and city social workers have been moving people out of Times Square as fast as they can, even as the city's shelter population nears record highs. According to the Times, in 2005 there were 55 calling the Times Square home. By 2009, it was seven. Now it's just Heavy.

There's a plan afoot to give Heavy a reason to leave, even though he declined offers of housing even as the people around him decided to leave the streets. Outreach workers from Common Ground are holding out hope that one day Heavy will decide he wants a roof over his head. Until then, they are thinking of 1.) dissuading locals from giving Heavy food, cigarettes and clothing and 2.) positioning a worker nearby to watch Heavy's every move. Neither of these sound ideal to me, but the people at Common Ground have known Heavy for close to 20 years and want what's best for him. What do you think? How can the last chronically homeless man in Times Square be led indoors?

Photo credit: Francisco Diez

Josie Raymond is a Change.org editor who has reported from the streets of the South Bronx, written for several magazines that folded (not her fault) and fixed thousands of typos.
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