29Illustration by Hokyoung Kimbetween 18 and 20 percent or higher. Last year,
nearly 85 percent of homeless students in New
York City were Black or Hispanic; the negative
academic impact of homelessness compounds
existing inequities in the education system.
Broadly, homeless children across the coun-
try tend to get so far behind in their early ele-
mentary years that they see no way to catch
up and drop out when they are older. Only 62
percent of New York City’s homeless students
graduated from high school last year; citywide,
the overall graduation rate was 77 percent.
Research from Voices of Youth Count at Chap-
in Hall at the University of Chicago showed
that failure to graduate from high school or
earn an equivalency diploma increased the
chances of experiencing homelessness as
young adults by 4.5 times. ‘‘If you are not read-
ing on time,’’ Duffi eld says, ‘‘you are more like-
ly to drop out of school, and in fact, children
who are homeless have higher dropout rates
than other poor children. Not having a high
school degree is the single greatest risk factor
for future homelessness. Not having access to
an education condemns these kids to a life of
poverty, homelessness and hardship.’’
The shutdowns the pandemic has brought
have worsened many of the conditions that
drive family homelessness and undermine
education. Advocates for homeless families
warn that without action, the city is poised
for an enormous wave of new homeless fami-
lies and even more children not able to attend
school consistently. According to data com-
piled by the N.Y.U. Furman Center, whose
research focuses on housing, 239,000 very- low-
income renter households are at ‘‘high risk’’ of
becoming homeless. If they experienced job
loss because of the pandemic, they’re currently
protected by an eviction moratorium, which
has been extended to the end of the year, but
they are most likely amassing unpaid back rent.
A coalition of organizations has urged city law-
makers to plan for the likelihood that when the
moratorium lifts, these households will still be
unemployed and will start entering the shelter
system. Christine C. Quinn, the former City
Council speaker who is now the president
and chief executive of Win, formerly Women
in Need, which runs 11 family shelters in the
city, told me: ‘‘Even if a small fraction come, the
system, which was already at capacity on the
family side, will be swamped. If we don’t inter-
vene before the eviction moratorium expires,
we will have a catastrophe in New York City.’’Prince returned with his parents to
the PATH center on Monday morning, after
another two days of waiting to be logged out.
Again Prince missed school, and again they
spent the entire day shuff ling between fl oors
waiting for placement in a shelter. That night
around 11, in the rain, the family boarded the
Department of Homeless Services van to the
Pan American, another former hotel on Queens
Boulevard near city impound lots. Fifi ’s case fi le
indicates that she can’t be placed in Queens
because that’s where her abuser and his large
extended family live. But by the time the place-
ment came, Fifi was too exhausted to protest.
At the Pan American, the security guard
warmed up a frozen pizza from the cafeteria
for them and took them to a room that Fifi said
had fi lthy carpets and packing tape holding
the door to the next room shut. She got up at
6 a.m. after a sleepless night ‘‘freaking out,’’
she said, and the family took the long subway
ride back to the PATH center. This time they
headed straight for the fl oor with the domestic-
violence offi ce. ‘‘You can’t put me in Queens,’’
Fifi , in tears, said when her number was called.
‘‘My fi le says so.’’
As their third day at PATH wore on, Prince
could not stomach the food he’d had in the
past at PATH — a still- frozen bologna sandwich
and a small cup of warm juice with a foil lid,
which ‘‘tasted like medicine.’’ He focused all
his boredom and frustration on this matter.
‘‘Mommy, can you get me something to eat?’’
he pleaded and whined over and over as the
day passed. ‘‘Mommy, please, can you get me
something to eat?’’
Although PATH serves only families with
children, it is organized in a way that makes
astonishingly little accommodation for that fact.
The vans, which transport families, appear to
have no car or booster seats and seem to operate
primarily at hours that are far past any child’s
bedtime. Endless waiting with an unpredictable
outcome in a space that does not allow foodor drinks to be brought in and doesn’t provide
toys or books is especially agonizing for small
children and those with special needs. When
families make it down to the bottom level of
the center, some take a chance with letting their
children run just outside the exit door to burn
off some steam. One day near that door, I met
Caledra, who had also become homeless fl eeing
a violent partner and whose seven children were
squealing and dashing around a garbage can.
She said: ‘‘We were all at PATH less than eight
months ago. I’m not sure why they still need
me to bring all seven kids back for the whole
day.’’ She shrugged, laughing ruefully. ‘‘Who lies
about having seven kids, anyway?’’
By midafternoon, Fifi realized that the last
thing Prince had eaten was the frozen pizza
they were given when they arrived at the Pan
American at midnight. She knew that if they
left the PATH center to get food, they would
risk losing their place in line, but she decided
it was worth the gamble. The family ran down
the street in the light rain to McDonald’s and
bought a 20-piece box of McNuggets. Then,
thinking about the many children also wait-
ing and whining, Fifi used a coupon from her
McDonald’s phone app to get a second box of
20 McNuggets for just a dollar more. Fifi put
the boxes in her purse, and the family raced
back up the block to the center. But the security
guard at the entrance took the warm boxes out
of her purse and told her she had to throw them
away. She took a few McNuggets out of the box
and hastily tried to feed them to Prince outside.
She brushed away tears angrily. ‘‘He’s a baby,’’
she said. ‘‘He can’t eat prison food.’’ Prince
didn’t cry, and he stopped whining about
being hungry. He just got, in his words, ‘‘really
mad and really quiet’’ for the rest of the day.
‘‘I never know what he’s absorbing about our
situation, what’s bothering him,’’ Fifi later told
me. ‘‘Sometimes he will bring up something
that happened months earlier, and I realize,
Whoa, he’s been thinking of it all this time.’’
That night, around midnight, the Depart-
ment of Homeless Services van took the fam-
ily to a new placement in the Bronx. It was
a cluster apartment — a building, often run-
down, that the city rents from landlords. They
were overjoyed. True, someone had scrawled
‘‘shelter people are pigs’’ in the elevator, and
an addict could sometimes be found rocking
himself trancelike in the stairwell, and a piece
of the bathroom ceiling was coming down. But
the family happily agreed that it was the nicest
place they had lived so far. For one thing, there
was a bedroom, where they set up Prince’s
books and toys, careful to not use the dresser
that came with the room for fear of bedbugs.
They draped a Mickey Mouse blanket over the
leaky window in his room to insulate against
the cold and try to block the sound of the sub-
way thundering past on elevated tracks nearby.
The kitchen was basic, but ‘‘it’s not completelyPrince didn’t cry, and he stopped
whining about being hungry. He just
got, in his words, ‘really mad and
really quiet’ for the rest of the day.