For the past week, Diane Majett has been sitting in Pershing Square on a little stool, next to the Citi Bike station by the Park Ave. Viaduct. Her luggage, containing her possessions, is arrayed behind her, and her cat, Buttercup, calmly sits nearby on a little leash.
Majett, in her 40s, is one of the city’s nearly 57,000 homeless. Born in Brooklyn, a former supermarket manager, she said she fell on hard times after she decided to follow her passion — art and fashion design.
Straphangers, commuters and Citi Bike riders, as they rush by, might notice her knitting, as she was this Wednesday, her bare feet on the warm asphalt. She makes coats and blankets for cats, and also shawls for people. (You can find her creations — modeled, of course, by Buttercup — online at “Represent Buttercup Catwalking Madyna Pet Gear. 2015”.)
Incredibly, somewhere hidden behind the pile of luggage, her son, Joshua, 26, was sleeping. He was conceived in a former boyfriend’s apartment on E. Houston St., she said. She admitted that Joshua smokes too much pot, which is probably why he doesn’t have a job, and that he needs to go into detox. For her part, Majett said that back when she got pregnant with him she was drinking a lot, but she seems to be sober now.
Lately, as Mayor de Blasio has come under attack in the daily tabloids — notably the New York Post — for the city’s homelessness problem, the focus has been to portray individuals like The Urinator on the Upper West Side or homeless drunks crashed out on cardboard boxes in Tompkins Square Park.
The Post has also negatively profiled the East Village’s crusty travelers for allegedly turning Taras Shevchenko Place behind Cooper Union into a toilet. And, of course — as covered by The Villager — at least two of the crusties’ pit bulls were recently running wild, leading to the death of photographer Roberta Bayley’s pug Sidney, plus viciously attacking two men trying to defend their dogs.
But the overall demonizing of the homeless is not fair to the many homeless, like Majett, who are peaceful and conscientious, yet simply lack a roof over their heads. Majett, like so many of the homeless, doesn’t want to go into one of the city’s shelters, feeling they are unsafe and unpleasant — and can you blame her? Individuals in the shelters who are troubled and / or dangerous need to be “separated” from those who just want to be left alone, she said. More to the point, she needs a real home so she can get her life back on track.
It’s said de Blasio is taking a more humane approach toward the homeless — which is great. But the question is: What is being done about people like Diane Majett? She told us that, in the week she has been sitting there, no outreach worker from the city has contacted her about helping her get off the street. The Grand Central Partnership business improvement district has told her she can fill out an application for housing, but nothing is available right now. We’re not professionals in the field, but she seems to us like a perfect candidate for supportive housing. But right now, she seems to be falling through the cracks — and it’s happening in broad daylight in one of the busiest places on the planet.
And she’s there at night too, sleeping right in the same spot. And on Wednesday night, we saw a bunch of other homeless people — around 10 — sleeping or bedding down for the night outside Grand Central. Leaving them alone and letting them live on the street is not dealing with the situation. And is it somehow really more humane? And no we didn’t see that many homeless people sleeping out there under Bloomberg. Things have changed.
In short, let’s look beyond the sensationalistic tabloid headlines about The Urinator et al. There are hundreds and thousands of Diane Majetts out there who need help — and, above all, permanent housing. Is anyone doing anything to help them?
In the meantime, if you see Majett across the street from Grand Central, check out her cat coats. The prices are negotiable.
