SUBWAY SHELTER

Words and Images by Whitney Summer Boyd

I knelt down beside the old man sleeping on the station floor. The ground was so cold, I felt the chill through my pants and immediately stood up. Yet somehow, despite the cold, the man remained dormant and completely undisturbed by my gentle poking and prodding.

It was 1 a.m. on Tuesday morning, and the subway stations from Times Square to Brooklyn were nearly empty of passengers. But as I wandered through the terminals, I found more and more people sleeping on benches, floors and along dirty walls with no pillows or warm blankets. They had with them only their life's belongings strapped to their side.

The faces of those sleeping on trains varied in age and appearance, although many of those found were elderly, black, sick and in dire need of medical support. Thomas, a 61-year-old former veteran, said he’d been sleeping in subway stations for the last three years. When I found Thomas, he was layered in two thick coats, tattered tennis shoes on his feet and a large garbage bag filled with his things.

Crumbs were sprinkled across his jacket and his fingers were smudged with the greasy remnants of his small fried chicken dinner. His mouth trembled as he explained how his night's rest was always uncertain. While sleeping outside, he was robbed of the few belongings he had more than six times. One night, he said, he woke up to someone peeing on his body.

Eventually, Thomas decided to use the subway terminal as his bedroom. Like the hundreds of other New Yorkers who use the subway as their home, he came there because it was always warm and had a police presence that rarely bothered him. In the subway, he could also avoid the restrictions of government-run shelters who force applicants to fill out long documents and stick to a schedule.

As I continued to roam the subway cars, I saw more homeless people using the seats as make-shift beds. Some wore hospital bracelets and said they still needed additional medical care. A woman named Sobras, 62, used a neck brace as a pillow as she slept sitting upright

on a platform bench. As Sobras explained, she had been hit by a car earlier in the year and never fully recovered. The hospital gave her a neck brace, but because she is uninsured, she couldn't continue with the recommended treatments. As a result, she decided to leave the neck brace on for almost three months after she was supposed to have it removed for fear of further harming her body.

As the night stretched into the early morning hours, the few passengers riding the subway passed by the countless homeless patrons as if they didn't even exist. Almost as if the men and women sleeping on the subway station were a natural part of the environment. Many subway riders barely took a second look at the people laid up on the benches and floors, even if they were sitting right next to them.

To me, it was as though the people who used the stations as their homes were in their very own world; the subway carts and floors their bedrooms, the terminals their living rooms and random corners served as bathrooms.

However uncertain they were of their next day, their homes remain underground, where at the very least, they could have a little rest.