How Homeless New Yorkers Rode Out Ida's Punishing Rain

On Wednesday evening, the remnants of Hurricane Ida struck New York City, dropping record-breaking rainfall that quickly overwhelmed the sewer system in parts of the city and killed at least 13 New York City residents, most living in basement apartments.

The National Weather Service issued its first-ever flash flood emergency warning for the city, and Mayor Bill de Blasio declared a state of emergency, warning New Yorkers in a tweet to stay indoors and off the streets and subways so first responders can get their work done.

For the roughly 4,000 New Yorkers who sleep on the city’s streets and in the subway system each night, staying inside Wednesday evening was easier said than done. The torrential rain came suddenly and somewhat unexpectedly. As the subway system shut down, many homeless New Yorkers were caught in the elements, scrambling to find a safe, dry spot to ride out the storm.

To learn what it was like to be without a home Wednesday evening, Gothamist/WNYC spoke with a few homeless and unstably housed New Yorkers about where they sought shelter during the deadly downpour.

Daniel

Daniel, who’s been homeless since March 2020, spends most evenings sleeping under scaffolding, because he says he doesn’t feel safe in the city’s shelters.

On Wednesday night, he made it to a scaffold in Midtown Manhattan and stayed underneath while the storm raged around him. He was up all night to keep his body off the wet pavement, dodging areas where the rain was pouring through the scaffolding above. He says he still got drenched.

As he sat on a Midtown sidewalk on Friday afternoon, his bag was still damp, and his clothes had only dried out the day before. “When it rains, I’m wet for at least another 24 hours,” he said. “My body heat dries my clothes.”

"Ray Ray"

A man who goes by the alias “Ray Ray” also found shelter under scaffolding Wednesday evening in Midtown Manhattan. He says he was able to stay relatively dry using milk crates and trash bags, as a “slight river” of water ran on the ground below.

“I wrapped a trash bag around my bottom waist and my legs, tied it up real good. At one point I put a bag over my top body, and put holes for my ankles and my arms so my clothes wouldn’t get soaked,” he said.

Like Daniel, he stays under scaffolding most nights, making a bed out of milk crates to get away from the rats.

“It’s terrible, but the shelter system is so bad. They steal from me, they rob me, they try to push drugs on me,” he said.

Nicholas

On the night of the storm, a homeless man named Nicholas was eventually able to make it inside a church on Seventh Avenue in Manhattan. He was not able to bring his belongings, however, and he lost an expensive toolkit that he says he needs to get work as an electrician.

“I didn’t know what to do. I was literally stuck, and I got soaked terribly,” he said. “I put my stuff down. When I came back, it was gone.” He was seated on the sidewalk near Union Square Friday afternoon, trying to collect donations to buy a bus ticket and a new kit.

Lewis, a Vietnam War veteran who has been homeless in the past, but who is currently staying in his aunt’s basement in the Bronx, says the flood waters came up through a drain and under an exterior door in the basement, soaking his belongings. He showed a video that he took showing two or three inches of water rushing over the basement floor.

“I guess the sewer system was so overwhelmed, the water had nowhere to go, so everything just backed up,” Lewis said. “The next thing, I turned around and the water was just rushing in.” He says it took him five or six hours to clear out the water with a broom.

Homeless New Yorkers who normally spend their nights on the city’s trains or in subway stations lost many of those options during the storm. Many subway stations saw dramatic flooding, and subway service was shut down overnight.

According to an MTA spokesperson, at stations with flooding conditions that posed a safety threat, everyone was asked to leave, including the homeless. There was no direct collaboration between the MTA and the city Department of Homeless Services (DHS) to connect homeless New Yorkers being removed from the system during the storm with shelter. DHS did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

For Jacqueline Simone, a senior policy analyst at Coalition for the Homeless, Wednesday’s storm illustrates how insufficient the patchwork system of scaffolding, subways, and shelters is for the people who rely on them to take cover.

“Homeless and unstably housed people are tragically and predictably the most at risk during extreme weather events,” she said. “Without the safety and protection of their own homes, they are exposed to the elements. The climate crisis […] underscores the urgent need to provide housing as a fundamental human right.”

Benjamin

Benjamin, who’s been homeless since February 2019, tried to escape from the storm by sheltering in the subway system. He says he entered the Bryant Park station when the downpour started, but eventually the station started flooding and workers asked him and others to leave.

He made his way to The Elgin bar on 48th Street in the Diamond District and spent the evening under the restaurant’s outdoor dining structure, where he says he was able to stay dry.

Benjamin said he’d rather sleep outside than deal with the conditions at one of the city’s shelters. “The city can do better than what it’s doing with shelters,” he said. “It’s heartbreaking that there’s not enough helpful resources for people in a city as sophisticated as New York City.”

While thousands of New Yorkers sleep on the city’s streets each night, the vast majority of the city’s estimated 50,000 homeless people sleep in shelters, keeping the true scale of the crisis out of sight.

Some emergency shelters have had to limit their capacity during the pandemic; the Tribeca campus of The Bowery Mission used to shelter 194 people each night. Due to social distancing constraints, the shelter now has 52 beds, all of which are full every evening, according to the location’s community life manager Michael Wearen.

Because the severe weather warning was unexpected, workers at the mission weren’t able to put the word out about the storm to the homeless community, or prepare to take in extra people. “We share information with our guests and clients as much as possible, and our homeless community really spreads things through word of mouth. But this was just a surprise, and very unfortunate,” Wearen said.

A man named Steve had just gotten out of the hospital and was sitting on the sidewalk near Times Square Friday afternoon. He says he spent the storm under scaffolding, which didn’t give him much protection. He got soaked, and all of his belongings were destroyed. “Everything got ruined and wet,” he said. “Clothes, sleeping bag, paperwork. I lost it all.”