Health Care Executive to Advocate for the Homeless

© Photograph by Alex Harris

In 1961, on my way to night classes at the City University of New York, I came out of the subway station onto a street in upper Manhattan and was confronted by a middle-aged woman in a long, shabby gray coat. She told me she needed some money because she was hungry. Growing up in New York City, one gets used to seeing people in all circumstances. But I was moved by this woman, perhaps because she was so close to me and her plea was aimed specifically at me, no one else was around. I took a dollar out of my pocket, gave it to her, and hurried off to my class.

The following Sunday, the encounter still fresh in my mind, I asked a priest I knew whether I should have done more to help the woman. He said no, not to worry, that my response to her was adequate. I walked away unconvinced.

The years between 1961 and 1999 were rich ones…However, as the years work on, I became increasingly aware of a yearning, at first vague but later unmistakable, to move to a place where I could work with people who, like the woman at the subway station, lived on the edge of desperation.

Homelessness is so complex. The more you get into it, the more complex it is. You listen to the men and women talk about their lives and you see the impact of families that don’t work, neighborhoods that are battlegrounds, kids who have no childhood, the sexual abuse of children, both boys and girls, the other kinds of abuse. It’s unbelievable what we allow to happen to our children and particularly to our poor children, and I think that’s where it all starts.

Read Ed’s full story in Encore »