AP Features, February 26th, 2007
Every day, a bus picks up homeless men off the streets of New York City and takes them 70 miles (110 kilometers) out into the countryside to a shelter, in a practice that has been going on quietly since the 1930s Depression era, when homeless people were called Bowery bums and fresh air was the solution to just about all ills.
The 1,001-bed Camp LaGuardia is New York City's biggest homeless shelter _ and the only one surrounded by farms and trees _ but its very existence is probably a surprise to many lifelong New Yorkers.
Now the city is closing it down.
While 73-year-old Camp LaGuardia was born of good intentions and what was then considered progressive thinking, some activists disapprove of it as an out-of-sight, out-of-mind answer to the city's homeless problem.
City Hall says its decision to shut down the shelter was more practical: It is too far outside New York, and the city wants to move away from temporary shelters to subsidized housing.
The shelter opened in 1934 on the site of a women's prison. It was named for the city's exuberant mayor, Fiorello LaGuardia, a year later. The place was expanded greatly in the 1980s with the growth of New York's homeless population.
In the camp's early decades, the homeless men could rustle up summer work in the kitchens at the big hotels, grow potatoes on the camp's farm, even relax over beer at the tap room _ yes, a tap room _ though they were not allowed to get drunk.
Nowadays, some of the men work day jobs at places such as a chicken-plucking plant operated by a community of Hasidic Jews.
About a third of the men leave on the daily buses to New York City for medical appointments, housing searches or family visits. Some work in the city.
Mohamed Chakdouf, 58, lost his job as a concierge at a big New York City hotel, separated from his wife, became depressed, fell behind in his rent and was evicted. By 2001, the Moroccan immigrant was camping out in a park in Manhattan. Breathing problems made winters tough on the street, and he came here by bus one night in January 2005.
"First day I woke up I'm surrounded by mountains," he recalled. "I say, `OK, I have no problem here, but it's so far away.'"
Isolation is a big complaint among homeless men used to urban hubbub.
Patrick Markee of the Coalition for the Homeless in New York said the big problem with LaGuardia is that it is so far from the city. That makes it difficult for the men to look for jobs and housing or take advantage of other services.
Though LaGuardia was started for the right reason, Markee said city leaders found the shelter especially useful when homelessness soared in the '80s.
"The city expanded Camp Laguardia and made it into the largest homeless shelter in New York in part to sort of keep the homeless out of sight of the general population," Markee said. He commended Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration for "doing the right thing" by closing LaGuardia.
With a homeless population estimated at 35,000, the city wants to spend LaGuardia's $19 million (euro14.44 million) budget on longer-term solutions such as subsidized housing with social services.
A year ago, all of Camp LaGuardia's beds were full. The last new arrival came in November, and the camp is now down to about 360 men. The last will leave by May 31.
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On the Net:
New York City Department of Homeless Services:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dhs/html/providers/meetadult.shtml
