‘Always on alert’: How the homeless are surviving violence in New York

Sekou Salaam knows all too well the dangers of the streets in New York: homeless for six months, he has been beaten with iron bars and threatened with a knife several times in a megalopolis where crime is skyrocketing.

“It’s for real here! We can be injured, killed”, protests the 55-year-old man met by AFP in the home of the Bowery Mission association, which offers meals to the homeless in the south of Manhattan.

In mid-March, New York and the federal capital Washington shook for a few days, until authorities arrested and charged with murder a man accused of killing two homeless people and wounding three others by shooting them while that they slept in the streets of both cities.

The police, justice and social welfare associations of large American megacities note that the number of crimes and offenses against the homeless is on the rise everywhere: in question, the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic on mental health , drug use and the circulation of firearms.

But politicians are also accused of stigmatizing the homeless as factors in crime in the United States.

– Hunt for the homeless –

Thus, the mayor of New York Eric Adams, a former democratic African-American policeman but classified in the center right, undertook in February to drive out of the gigantic network of the subway the innumerable homeless people who survive there. In particular after the murder in January of an Asian American, pushed on a track by a man dragging on the docks and suffering from psychiatric disorders.

There would be 50,000 homeless in New York.

Unheard of since the crisis of the 1930s, according to the association National Coalition for the Homeless, in a city marked by deep inequalities between its nine million souls scattered in five boroughs (Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx and Staten Island).

And the New York and Washington killer in March, Gerald Brevard III, 30, has caused panic among New York’s homeless.

“I was very scared, I said to myself + be careful where I land +”, confides Mr. Salaam, who sleeps at night in huts set up on the sidewalks by bars and restaurants during the pandemic.

But the danger remains.

– “On guard” –

Arnie Medero, 39, including five years on the street, takes his “precautions” by never spending two nights in a row in the same place and by breaking glass on the sidewalk to hear a possible attacker approaching.

“I am always on alert, constantly on my guard,” he told AFP.

According to figures from the municipality of New York, the number of homeless people killed has tripled in three years: from seven murders in 2018 to 22 in 2021.

In October 2019, a quadruple homicide struck a chord in Manhattan when a homeless man killed four fellow misfortunes by beating them to death with a metal pipe.

An outburst of violence in a context of growing insecurity in New York and in American cities for two years: the New York police (NYPD) recorded a total of 488 homicides in 2021 in their city, a slight increase after the sharp increase of 2020 (468 against 319 in 2019).

– “Violence on the rise” –

As for the homeless, there are no nationwide statistics but the National Coalition for the Homeless believes that “the numbers are rising and the violence is definitely on the rise”.

In fact, Messrs. Salaam and Medero find the street – as well as the hostels – increasingly dangerous due to attacks from other homeless people but also from ordinary passers-by.

Of the approximately 50,000 homeless people in New York, 48,500 slept in shelters in January, up 15% from January 2012.

But these accommodation centers often rhyme with “lack of privacy, fights and arguments”, told AFP Jovada Senhouse, a 56-year-old woman who has survived from home to home for five years.

For associations, one of the solutions would be to fight against the housing shortage and poor housing in New York, one of the scourges of the megalopolis.

–