At night, desperate scramble to find any refuge from cold
IN DAYLIGHT, Penn Station is a chaotic sea of anxious travelers rushing to parts unknown, and everyone seems just a little bit behind schedule.
But at night — especially in the winter — when the crowds are gone and trains are few and far between, Penn Station becomes its own self-contained dystopia.
Driven off the streets as the mercury drops, dozens of homeless men and women haunt the lonely corridors at night, searching out the isolated corners throughout the massive complex.
Penn Station offers their only respite from the brutal cold that so far this year has killed two of their own: a homeless man who froze to death in the Bronx and another under the Hell Gate Bridge in Queens.
Penn Station has become, over the years, a go-to address for the city’s army of street homeless — an army that has grown from 2,838 in 2016 to 3,936 in 2017, an increase of nearly 39%.
The News made several late night trips to Penn Station over the last month and found a strange underworld: By 10 p.m., homeless men and women have taken over an entire corridor in the New Jersey Transit waiting area, filling up seats or simply collapsing on the cold marble floor. Few travelers venture here.
Later they’re all moved out and that section is shuttered. As a group they move to the underground concourse running through the station between the Seventh Ave. entrance and the Amtrak waiting area.
In their Penn Station, there is no weekend break to anticipate, no new destination to contemplate. There’s almost no human interaction except with the police who request that they move.
On Jan. 23, at about 2 a.m., the ragged army was out in force as the city Department of Homeless Services completed its annual overnight count of the street homeless.
Even though it was a moderate 38 degrees outside, the homeless were draped everywhere inside.
Men and women of indeterminate ages could be seen leaning, lying and sitting all over the station — a jarring sight next to a line of storefronts stocked with luxury items.
A disoriented man paced back and forth yelling at the top of his lungs. A passed-out man wore bright white sneakers that appeared to be new, while another wore shoes that had all but melted away.
Collapsed on the floor, a man in a gray T-shirt and sweats had made himself at home — a clear sign he didn’t intend to leave the building that night.
At the entrance to Track 5, a comatose man had wedged himself into an impossible position — with his head resting inside a trash can.
Police won’t roust anyone sitting on a bench, so a conscious man in red winter parka sat on a seat on the northbound No. 1 subway platform next to three unconscious men, including one sitting upright with a blanket over his head.
“I’m not staying here, but I am here,” explained the man in the red parka.
On the southbound platform, a man in a wheelchair with ragged beard and bloodshot eyes had wrapped his legs in a bright blue plaid blanket. He wouldn’t say if he had a place to stay, but repeated, “I’m all right.”
Several of these nighttime denizens had arranged multiple bags of belongings around their feet, indicating that this was where they spend most of their days as well.
On multiple visits, a News reporter observed that many of these Penn Station residents appear to return to the same spot each night. Workers for a nonprofit that offers assistance to the homeless said they often see the same faces again and again.
One of these longstanding Penn Stations residents is a middle-aged woman who says her name is Deborah. On a recent Friday as rush hour approached, she stood by herself in the Amtrak concourse, involved in a detailed conversation with a pole.
The pole featured a flashy advertisement for designer shoes. Deborah wore dirty suede boots, multiple layers of coats and dresses and hats and a heavy blue mascara around her eyes.
People dashing to trains did not see her — or if they did, they tried not to. A young blonde woman happened to glance over and catch Deborah’s eye. The woman quickly looked away.
For a good 10 minutes Deborah appeared to be answering the questions of someone who was not there. She approached a reporter and asked him to watch her bags so she could go to the bathroom.
“The guards sometimes take my bags and I really have to go to the bathroom,” she explained.
When she returned, Deborah — who declined to give her last name — said she is “about 50” and used to be a secretary who could type 50 words a minute. She graduated from St. John University with an English degree in 1986, and hadn’t worked for a couple of years.
Every day for most of the day, Deborah said, she stands in two specific spots: next to the pole with the shoe advertisement or at a second location in the N.J. Transit section.
She insisted that although she has brought six bags with her to Penn Station and does so every day, she has a place to stay “with a friend.”
“I need this stuff,” she said, when asked why she didn’t leave her bags with her friend. “It’s not as much as it seems.”
Several days later The News found her again, standing in her designated spot in the NJ Transit area. On this day, however, it was 10 p.m., and all her bags were still arranged at her feet.
Asked if people ever stop to talk to her, she responded, “I have friends here.”