Op Ed - Homeless Motels In Suffolk County

The Newly Poor, the Generational and The Out of State Residents by Maureen Rossi    

I have good news for anyone who cares about their fellow man – Suffolk County does not turn away anyone seeking emergency housing, they will find shelter for any individual who finds themselves without a home.   I have bad news for the taxpayers – people are flocking from other states to come to Suffolk County because of the outstanding services we provide.  Okay, outstanding may not be the best word to describe the circumstance of any homeless person but for the working poor who struggle day to day to pay their rent and feed their families, outstanding might describe the lives of some living in the Suffolk County motels.   Their rent is paid, their food is paid for, and their children receive school supplies, toys, books and clothing.  Under the McKinney Vento Act, their children must be bused to the schools of their choice.  They have an unfettered choice – the working poor do not. 

Long Islander’s are generous people – we love to assist those in need.  Although terribly middle-class for the last 49 years, I consider myself to be blessed beyond measure for so many reasons and was raised to be one of these people.  So it was natural for me to begin to give rides to the homeless women I encountered along Route 25 in the summer of 2012.  The women resided at a homeless motel on Route 25 and I would find them with their little ones at bus stops waiting to go east to Stop and Shop for groceries or west to Target for groceries and clothing.  In the summer of August warnings of severe weather rose out of the radio of my old Ford Explorer.  The sky was turning purple and the wind was gusting as I was pulled out of Stop and Shop to head back to my Kings Park home.  I saw a young black woman with two small children and a fold up stroller at the bus stop.  I rolled down the window and told her to get.   Her name was Mika, she had a beautiful dark complexion and cobalt blue eyes, I guessed she was in her early twenties.   Her babies were adorable – small toddlers a boy and a girl; I opened some cookies and doled them out to the seemingly hungry children.   The second Mika got in the truck the skies opened and although less than a mile, the ride to her motel was slow.  Mika and I shared small formalities, our names, the names of our children and we discussed the importance of education.  Mika was from North Carolina and had attended two years of college.   Brand new to the motel, I listened as she spoke excitedly about making fried chicken for her children that night.  She said they were not allowed to cook at the homeless motel but she had borrowed a skillet from another woman and couldn’t wait to make her children a proper meal.    I told her I made the best fried chicken she ever ate because I soaked my chicken in buttermilk overnight and I said I would bring her some.   As I dropped Mika and her children off in front of room 28, despite promises that I would be back, she later told me she thought she’d never see me again.  She was wrong.

I created one Facebook post that day sequestering second hand backpacks, school supplies, sneakers and clothes for the children at the motel.  Within three hours my porch was full of bags, much to my husband’s chagrin, every single day more and more bags would arrive and they began to include toys and books.  The women in Kings Park are the most generous women I have ever encountered in my life.  To this day I tear up when I think about the depths of their kindness.

As promised, I returned to visit Mika within a week.  As I began to unload the donations she and the other mothers trickled out of their small motel rooms.  A hot August day had the doors to their modest rooms open and I glanced inside those rooms and made a concerted effort not to stare.   I had a hard time digesting what I saw, at that time I could only describe it as abject poverty.  The women introduced themselves, I got a few hugs.  They were pretty cool – I asked them what they needed and took mental notes.  I told them I would be back but they probably thought they’d never see me again.  They were wrong.   I came back again and again every week for nine months sometimes just to visit with the women and see how they were doing.  I finally made Mika a large tray of fried chicken with my home-made buttermilk biscuits and potato salad.   She said it was better than hers and she shared it with the family that lent her the skillet when she first arrived.  There was a great deal of fairness and gratitude between the women at the motel.

I freely gave out my number to the women.  They would call me if a new family moved in and they didn’t have emergency food.  They called me when one of the girls was in labor and I brought her over to St. Catherine’s Hospital.  They called me with questions about parenting and schoolwork and how to talk to the school about problems their children were having.  There was Peaches and Mrs. T. and Terry and eventually Mika’s mother and sister came up from North Carolina as well.  I can’t remember all their names.   They were good women – they were enormously fair when it came to the donations – they would sometimes pass on donations saying they received last time and insist the new residents take some clothes.  After the first toy drop off, the children knew my truck and would come running when they saw me.  They would wrap their little arms around me and smother me with hugs and kisses.  Their mother’s had them call me Miss Maureen; sometimes I would bake cookies for them or bring them fresh fruit.    One pretty little white girl about three or four had dirty matted hair and her mother was always screaming at her.  Upon one delivery that mother got loud and all kinds of street with me (up in my face); she was politely taken off to the side away from the earshot of the children and told in no uncertain terms, with less than ladylike language that if she ever did it again, she would need the immediate assistance of a dentist.   I never saw her again.   When I returned the girls told me CPS came and took her little girl away because she was being abused.  That child’s precious little face haunts me to this day.

I learned a lot from the families at met at that motel.  I learned there is a new face in America; it is the face of the newly poor.  Several residents were born and raised middle class on Long Island because of various situations, they found themselves homeless.  I learned that Suffolk County has one of the best homeless programs and that many travel from other states to reap the benefits provided by our county.  I learned some homeless people are way better off than the working poor – one family at the motel had four, yes four smart phones.   Some of the families had laptops and expensive sneakers, one teen at the motel attended a Catholic high school.  I learned that for some the experience of living off of the government and other people is a generational experience, some residents at the hotel were third and fourth generation welfare recipients.   I tried not to judge to the best of my ability but when I saw some of the women giving birth to their sixth child (we had three that winter), I couldn’t help but bothered by the ignorance of bringing children into the world knowing full well you couldn’t care for them.  I learned that Suffolk County needs to provide so much more than housing for our homeless, the problem vast and complex.   My friend Mika went back down to the Carolinas with her children and resumed life with their father, a reputed gang member.    Mika is now serving time in prison for her involvement with the gang and is expecting twins.    

Maureen Ledden Rossi