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(An article from my hometown paper.) http://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100124/NEWS/1240344 News Recession reveals new face of homeless in mid-Hudson 'It could happen to you or your neighbor' By Steve Israel Times Herald-Record January 24, 2010 2:00 AM Lounging in his box seat near the sparkling green baseball diamond, feet on the dugout roof as he munches a hot dog, no one could possibly know the dad is homeless — not even his kids next to him. But after the dad had taken those kids to the Hudson Valley Renegades game — buying the great seats to salvage a shred of dignity — the divorced ex-Wall Street worker drops his children at their mom's house. Then he drives to the Walmart parking lot, sets the front seat of his SUV in the reclining position, covers himself with one of his 8 blankets and goes to sleep in his only home, his car. This is the face of the new — and hidden — mid-Hudson homeless: middle-class men and women without a safety net who, when they lose their jobs, often live under the public radar by finding shelter in cars and on couches. This dad was a computer analyst from the city who just a few years ago was earning enough money — $80,000 per year in salaries and bonuses — to buy a new, three-bedroom $250,000 colonial home on three-quarters of an acre in Orange County, with a finished basement, a backyard swing set and a basketball hoop. Then the dad — who wants to be called Lenny because he's too embarrassed to give his real name — loses his job in the Wall Street layoffs that have so far cost more than 100,000 financial workers their positions. The Bronx native, who had been living paycheck to paycheck to pay more than $3,000 per month in expenses that included a $1,500-per-month mortgage from Countrywide, cannot pay his bills, not even with his wife's $500-per-week office job. He opens the mail to find threatening foreclosure notices. He picks up the phone to hear threatening foreclosure phone calls. He has no savings. He has no job. He loses his home. He has enough pride not to want to tell his only close relative, his elderly mother, that he's losing everything, this man without a college degree who built a new life by working. So on a hot and muggy August day three years ago, he shuts the door of his dream home one final time. With a backpack containing his $100 leather jacket from the Gap, some clothes, toiletries and pictures of his kids, Lenny, then 55, heads to the place that — along with brief stays in an apartment, two filthy motels and a long stay in a clean shelter — would be his new home for months, that SUV with 200,000 miles on it. "I can't even articulate how (crappy) I felt," Lenny says. So when he finally gets some money from the sale of that house — after settling his divorce — he wants to do something for the kids he'd read bedtime stories to. He buys them those Renegades season tickets. "The best," he says. "You do anything for normalcy." Face of homeless has changed The new, often hidden homeless are middle-age ex-Wall Street workers like Lenny, who sleep in cars beneath towering mall lights, play poker on laptops and read library books about larger-than-life heroes like Joe DiMaggio. They sneak showers at truck stops and work temporary jobs at malls including Woodbury Common. "It's not drug addicts or derelicts; it's teachers, secretaries, truck drivers," says Lenny, ticking off some folks he's met at soup kitchens and shelters. The new homeless are mothers like Monticello's Sherry Sanders, who quits her waitress job that paid as much as $800 a week to move to the mountains from New Jersey with a boyfriend. Then she loses her new $15 per hour house-cleaning job when the resort closes. She ends up sleeping on friends' couches after the relationship ends. All she has left is the eyeliner she wears to remind her of better days. Pride doesn't allow her to tell her married kids about her homelessness. The new homeless are young office worker moms like Middletown's Tanya Covert, who could not pay the $2,000 per month it costs for her to rent, heat, power and eat in her mobile home. So she too ends up homeless, finding shelter for herself and her little girl in a motel room just outside her daughter's school district. She waits weeks to tell the school she's homeless — and eligible for free meals — for fear the girl will have to transfer from the school she loves. The new homeless include a real estate broker whose income has been slashed from $200,000 to $20,000. They include a nurse and a carpenter, a teacher and a secretary who have been living on the thin ice of the recession economy and have fallen through the cracks when they lose their jobs. "The face of the homeless has changed; it's the middle class, the upper-middle class," says Shari Trust, who, as the chairwoman of the Housing Task Force in Monticello, gets some 30 calls a week for help. "Employment's cut back. Overtime's cut back, and if you can't hang on to your home, your credit's shot so you can't even get an apartment." The new homeless are not necessarily the hundreds of mothers and fathers, sons and daughters packing the region's few shelters to capacity. Like Lenny, they're the anonymous car dwellers in parking lots and "couch surfers" in apartments, often swelling the number of people in a two-bedroom place to 10. The new homeless are often so hidden, they go uncounted. But the state does know that more than 1,300 local school kids, and their families, are considered homeless by their schools because they don't have a regular place to sleep each night — a number that's soared some 30 percent over the past two years. In Orange County alone, the official number of homeless has doubled over the past two years, to 218. The unofficial number is twice that. "People can't see the face of homelessness. It could happen to you or your neighbor," says Kathi Hitt, director of administration and case management for Sullivan County's Division of Health and Family Services. Her agency sees some 250-260 people per month, but has difficulty tallying numbers of the new homeless because of their anonymity and the fact that staff to document the problem has been cut. Too proud to ask for help But even though the population of the new homeless is as diverse as the population of those with homes, most have one thing in common in this region that's been the fastest growing in the state: no financial or family safety net. When folks like Lenny get behind on their mortgages or lose their homes, they have no place to turn. To rent an apartment, you need at least three months' rent, including one month's security. With the fair market value of a two-bedroom apartment in Orange, Ulster or Sullivan counties about $1,000 per month, you must have $3,000. "And who has that?" asks former waitress Sherry Sanders. School nurses — who often see the littlest, most helpless victims of the new homelessness — are also the first to see how easy it is to slip through the cracks of this financial thin ice. They see more and more children without anyone to contact in an emergency besides a parent. "There is no support system," says Pine Bush Elementary School nurse Bobbie Ercoline, whose school food pantry helped two new homeless families in just the past month. And while the traditional poor know the ropes of the welfare system, the new homeless often have no idea that there are programs to help prevent homelessness. Plus, many of the new homeless are too proud to ask for help. So, like Lenny, they may rent an apartment that they can't afford, or live in a $350 per week motel, which soon drains whatever money they have. And they end up on couches or in cars — clinging to whatever normalcy they can salvage, like those Renegades tickets, or that eyeliner. "I think I was depressed," says Lenny. So he would sleep beneath those blankets, awake shivering at 3 a.m. and drive to the home where his kids slept, just for a look. And when his wife was at work, he'd often find the spare key and sneak a shower. He finally did ask for help at Occupations Inc. in Middletown, which offered him counseling, medication, shelter and the chance to apply for government benefits like food stamps — which he shares with his old family while he stays with them this winter. But even after all he's been through, even after sleeping in his car for months, Lenny, now 59, still hasn't come to grips with his not-so-new homelessness. Ask if he considers himself homeless and he'll tell you about watching "Law and Order" with his kids. He'll see a wild-eyed, mangy guy who is "homeless." "I look around and feel paranoid," he says, tugging on that black leather jacket he bought a few years ago when he was working on Wall Street and living in a new home. "And I think, that's not me. That's not any of us. We're normal." 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