Mother’s homeless crusade honoured by council

– The Girl Scouts who meet every Friday in a New York hotel could be any other American youngsters learning life skills, but with one crucial difference. They are all homeless.

Troop 6000 is New York’s first Girl Scout brigade exclusively for homeless girls, all of whom live at the Sleep Inn in Queens, where they can sleep three to a bed in a shelter for 100 families.

It highlights the crushing homeless problem in New York, a city of huge wealth disparity. With more billionaires than any other city in the world, New York’s unrelenting pursuit of wealth and gentrification means that those on modest wages struggle to find affordable housing.

There are approximately 60 000 people affected. During the 2015-16 academic year, nearly 33 000 students in city public schools lived at least some of the time in homeless shelters.

To keep as many people off the streets as possible, Sleep Inn is one of at least 80 hotels turned into shelters, housing 7 500.

Giselle Burgess, a single mom of five whose family was made homeless last August, was instrumental in setting up Troop 6000 in January.

“I only had eight girls including my three daughters and then as the weeks were going by, we had more and more,” says Burgess.

Three months later, she has 25 girls aged five to 14.

Smart, articulate and working as a community development specialist for Girl Scouts of Greater New York, Burgess likens finding an affordable home to “a needle in a haystack”.

Her family was made homeless last August when their lease expired and the landlord sold up.

She and her children, aged three to 14, take turns to sleep two or three to a bed in the Queens hotel.

New York’s city council this week honoured the troop’s unique status, inviting them to a ceremony in their gilded Manhattan chamber. – AFP