Hurdles to help that’s needed

In shelters or on the streets, homeless struggle to access entitled stimulus payments

NEW YORK — For most Americans, the third stimulus payment, like the first two, arrived as if by magic, landing unprompted in the bank or in the mail.

Imagine not having a bank account or a mailing address. Or a phone. Or identification.

Charlie Velez, sitting on a milk crate outside the Grand Street subway station on the Lower East Side of Manhattan last month clinking 65 cents in a paper cup, is 0 for 3 on stimulus checks.

“I didn’t know the process,” he said. Velez, born in Brooklyn 58 years ago, appears to qualify and could still collect all three payments, totaling $3,200, if he filed a 2020 tax return.

But he has not filed taxes in years. The closest he comes to the banking system is when he sleeps in an ATM vestibule. Velez said that although outreach workers occasionally approached him to offer help, when it came to the stimulus, “No one has mentioned it to me.”

Just about anyone with a Social Security number who is not someone else’s dependent and who earns less than $75,000 is entitled to the stimulus. But some of the people who would benefit most from the money are having the hardest time getting their hands on it.

“There’s this great intention to lift people out of poverty more and give them support, and all of that’s wonderful,” said Beth Hofmeister, a lawyer for the Legal Aid Society’s Homeless Rights Project. “But the way people have to access it doesn’t really fit with how most really low-income people are interacting with the government.”

Interviews with homeless people in New York City over the past couple of weeks found that some mistakenly assumed they were ineligible for the stimulus. Others said that bureaucratic hurdles, complicated by limited phone or internet access, were insurmountable.

“It’s like a scavenger hunt,” said Josiah Haken, chief program officer for New York City Relief, a nonprofit that helps connect homeless people to resources.

James Keyes, 50, sitting outside a Starbucks in Brooklyn one recent evening, did not think he qualified.

“I don’t even have a phone,” he said. “I don’t have any identification at all.”

ANDREW SENG/THE NEW YORK TIMES People wait for meals March 22 at the Bowery Mission in Manhattan. Some Americans who would benefit most from the government’s stimulus payments amid the pandemic are having the hardest time getting it for a variety of reasons.