Plummeting temperatures have sent scores of homeless New Yorkers into the citys already over-burdened shelter system in recent weeks. Last month, the number of homeless in the system reached an all-time high 38,000 men, women and children, according to a report released by the Coalition for the Homeless.
But in Richmond Hill, a small group of homeless individuals have spurned aid from the city, choosing to bear the unbearable cold under a stretch of an abandoned, elevated railway that runs along 100th Street.
They are some of thousands who find refuge in New Yorks forgotten enclaves on a daily basis.
Ray Carrero, a director of the operation and response team with the mayors community assistance unit (CAU), has been fighting a sometimes lonely battle to convince the Richmond Hill group and others to accept shelter.
"Sometimes people want to paint us as bad guys," he said. "They see us as forcing homeless people to do things they dont want to do."
As the head of the homeless task force in the mayors quality of life initiative, Carrero accepts that those individuals he encounters on the streets will view his actions with suspicion.
"It may be true maybe I am forcing people to do things," the soft-spoken, 41-year-old told the Forum Courier. "But its getting them into a warm place, where they can get medical attention, food, a change of clothes, and a bath."
About a month ago, Richmond Hill residents living near Atlantic Avenue contacted the CAU about a homeless group congregating under the concrete support structures of the old Atlantic rail line, which closed down in 1953 and is now owned by the city.
Carrero visited the site and found a man named Rob sleeping at the top of a stairwell, adjacent to a brick wall blockading the one-time entrance to the tracks, at the northern corner of Atlantic Avenue and 100th Street.
Other local residents also directed him towards an encampment of another five or six homeless individuals on the southern side of Atlantic, atop a hill that rises to within a few feet of the elevated tracks.
"I try to make them feel comfortable by introducing myself and making them feel like human beings, and they usually respond to that." said Carrero. "I tell them that I want to offer city services."
Convincing the homeless to accept services sometimes resembles the selling techniques of a "used car salesman," he admits.
"I try to paint a pretty picture, but the shelters are stigmatized."
Many of the homeless he encounters have already been through the shelters and have no desire to reenter the system, even during the frigid winter months.
"What I usually hear is, the shelters are bad, they steal my stuff."
According to the Coalition for the Homeless report, nearly 75% of homeless New Yorkers suffer from chronic mental illnesses.
"Staying out in the cold is, in some ways, just a slow, painful way of committing suicide," said Carrero.
But the city is legally obligated to put the homeless into shelters during a "cold emergency," when temperatures fall below freezing, endangering the lives of those sleeping on the streets.
Carrero gave the group at the Atlantic Avenue encampment two weeks notice before a crew was scheduled to move in and clean up the makeshift homes. He asked the citys Department of Homeless Services to send outreach teams. He acquired the necessary trespassing summonses from the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, and he kept visiting the group and encouraging them to accept city shelter.
By last week, however, they had all disappeared.
On Thursday afternoon, January 16, workers with the Human Resources Administration were slowly clearing away the encampment, and Carrero was showing various city officials around the site.
A few metal bars had been removed from a fence next to the elevated rail, enabling access for the clean-up crew. Garbage was strewn across the slope of the hill clothing, food, mattresses, bottles, cans, crates covered the earth around clumps of barren trees.
The small space under the elevated rail had been subdivided into a half dozen compartments, one for each homeless person.
One compartment had been the makeshift residence for a middle-aged woman that the group members call "Mom." She left behind a library of hardcover books and a collection of stuffed animals next to her shoddy mattress.
A pungent stench filled the air near the bathroom compartment, a low room with piles of human feces and used scraps of toilet paper covering the ground.
The final compartment was littered with drug paraphernalia needles, crack pipes, pans for preparing heroin.
Near the entrance, a group of gruff, bulky men were gathered around a sanitation truck, taking a break from the clean-up. Some were from the "Wildcats," the Bushwick unit of HRAs work experience program for welfare recipients.
"Weve done plenty of homeless encampments with more rubbish then this one," said the group leader, a heavy-set man who calls himself "Powerful."
As the clean-up continued over the next few days, Carrero explored the streets around the abandoned railway, which stretches southward beyond Liberty Avenue.
On Friday morning, he saw "Mom" standing in front of the Dunkin Donuts a few blocks away on Atlantic Avenue. She was with another homeless man and her 140-pound Rottweiler.
"Mom told me that she was doing fine and that she had moved to a new spot but she wouldnt say where."
Carrero, bundled in layers of clothing to ward off the cold, tried to follow her for awhile, figuring that the group had stayed close to the original site. Eventually, however, he lost track of Mom.
While walking along 100th Street, he found an old man sleeping under the tracks, behind a corrugated metal fence. He introduced himself, and the man became belligerent.
"He told me to leave him alone."
By the afternoon, the man had already disappeared.
Back at the site, the clean-up crew was pushing forward. On the northern side of Atlantic, city workers had already secured the stairwells with tall, chain-link fences.
Thomas Curitore, the first deputy commissioner with CAU, was examining the work.
"This is all part of the mayors Operation Eye Sore," he said, pointing to the graffiti-covered wall between the stairwells. "Well paint this over and then well close off the site across the street."
Carrero acknowledged that closing off the site would only force the local homeless to build new encampments elsewhere, as Mom had already done.
In his year and a half as the head of the mayors homeless task force, Carrero has only been able to convince about 10% of the homeless he encounters to accept city services.
"Its very frustrating for me," he said. "But its hard not to be compassionate when you see the conditions these people are living in."
As long as the cold emergency continues, he has a duty to find people sleeping on the streets and get them into shelters, preventing them from freezing to death in nighttime temperatures that have been falling bellow 10 degrees.
This past Saturday, January 18, it was too cold for the Wildcats to continue their work, and an eerie silence settled over the remains of the encampment.
Carrero was confident that the site would soon be cleared, but he also knew that time was working against him.
"Right now, every half hour counts. Every second counts," he said. "My biggest fear is coming across frozen dead."
