In The Big Freeze, There's No Place Like A Doorway
The Age
Saturday January 22, 1994
New York, Friday. In the bitter cold of night, the lights in the windows of Leggiadro, a boutique on the fancy upper reaches of Madison Avenue, cast their glow on $40 tights, Cashmere leggings and on Fred Nardella, a man wrapped in a green Army surplus blanket who was trying to get some sleep in a cardboard box.
Nardella motioned to a cardboard box and a tangle of blankets next to him in the doorway of Suzanne's Millinery. ``That's a guy I know," he said. And then he pointed down Madison Avenue. ``There's two more down there and two more on the other side."
With the deep-freeze across the East having made venturing outside painful, and even driven many homeless people who usually live on the streets into shelters, Nardella and others asleep along Madison Avenue just after midnight yesterday were a remarkable sight.
As the temperature sank to minus 17 degrees Celsius _ a record low for the second straight day in New York City _ the bundles on Madison Avenue were part of a loose community of homeless people who had shunned city shelters.
Some homeless people said they had rejected dangerous conditions in the shelters and decided instead to pit their wits against the elements.
On one of the coldest nights of the year, they were odd nocturnal visitors on the doorsteps of fine shops in an elegant neighborhood.
A man whose head stuck out of his box like a tank driver's was asleep at the Hilde Gerst Gallery near 62nd Street. On the next block, one person was sleeping in front of a ladies' sleepwear store called Amor Perfeito and another was in the doorway of Addison on Madison under a window displaying silk ties. Further up the street, a man was asleep in front of a store advertising Waterford and Wedgewood.
It is not by chance that Nardella and others choose Madison Avenue over homeless encampments along the rivers in lower Manhattan. Just as with those who live or have businesses in the neighborhood, the homeless are drawn there by its safety and relative calm.
``It's quiet," Nardella said. ``You have the cops around all the time."
But the frigid weather evened the score across the city, doling out its doses of misery in equal portions, and the homeless were not left out.
Many responded by heading indoors. City authorities reported that 6656 single homeless people stayed in city shelters on Wednesday night, about 1000 more than on more temperate winter nights.
The surge in the shelter population this week still left the number of single homeless people in shelters almost 2000 below the number who regularly stayed in shelters two years ago.
Officials said the decline was partly explained by the development in recent years of permanent housing for homeless people who are either mentally ill or have AIDS.
Nardella, who said he has been homeless for six years _ when his apartment in the Bronx burned down _ said he prefers the street because shelters ``are not quiet".
``Tonight's an exception," Nardella said early yesterday morning, lying on his back in the boutique doorway. ``It's too cold." _ New York Times
© 1994 The Age