The New York Times Magazine 61trying to reassure her sixth grader, who attended
a charter school in the Bronx, that their place-
ment in a hotel in Flushing, Queens, would be
fi ne. ‘‘It won’t be as bad as Rockaway was,’’ she
said to him reassuringly as he stomped his foot,
upset. When she turned away from her son, the
gentleness dropped from her voice, and she
burned with frustration and panic, describing the
impossible logistics of this placement. She began
to cry and told me that she couldn’t get upset
in front of her son; we would have to talk later.
Elizabeth texted me the number of her room
at the Prince Flushing Hotel, a small, boxy new
building on a block with Chinese restaurants. As
the Department of Homeless Services van trans-
ported her and her children to the hotel, I took a
car to meet her. When I arrived, I told the desk
clerk that I wanted to visit Room 505. He looked
bewildered. ‘‘Uh, the fi fth fl oor is not part of the
hotel,’’ he said, although of course the fi fth fl oor
was part of the hotel, stacked right on top of the
third and fourth fl oors. He was adamant that no
visitors could go to the fi fth fl oor. He said the
hotel was sold out that night, so I booked a room
for the next night on Booking.com. The next day,
I checked into my room on the second fl oor and
rode the elevator to the fi fth fl oor in the hopes of
talking to Elizabeth. But by then, she had decided
to move back in with relatives in an apartment
closer to her children’s school and child care.
I stayed at the hotel anyway. In the elevator, I
chatted with a tourist toting her pink, fl owered
N.Y.C. souvenir backpack. At the breakfast area
for guests, I got a cup of coff ee next to a hotel
guest on his laptop and then walked maybe 30
feet down the hallway, where the Department
of Homeless Services quietly admitted home-
less families and handed out meals that could be
microwaved in rooms, away from the guests.
I identifi ed myself as a reporter and asked if
I could speak with someone. The social- service
worker looked fl ummoxed. Journalists are gen-
erally not allowed in department shelters or the
PATH center. She phoned someone who seemed
to oversee the area’s hotels. A few minutes later,
that person charged in, reprimanded me for tres-
passing and demanded that I leave the property. I
explained that I had paid for a room in the hotel,
and then no one knew what to do.
P.S. 401, in the Brownsville neighborhood of
Brooklyn, is the zoned school for two large
homeless shelters, which house over 400 fam-
ilies. The backs of the shelters face a rail line.
Nearby is a scrap-metal facility and a recycling
center piled with mountains of bags fi lled with
plastic bottles. Of the 338 students who attend-
ed P.S. 401 during the 2018-19 school year, 104
lived in temporary housing. Eighty- nine were
in homeless shelters, and 15 were doubled up.
In one kindergarten class, three- quarters of the
students were homeless. More than half of P.S.
401’s students were chronically absent.
Homeless students attend all but a dozen of
New York City’s 1,600 non charter public schools,
but they are much more highly concentrated in
schools in high- poverty areas like Brownsville;
according to Advocates for Children of New
York, during the 2018-19 school year, there were
three other city districts where at least one in fi ve
students were homeless. Schools have tradition-
ally been organized around place, parish, zone.
Now that roughly one-tenth of city students are
untethered to a place, in the last few years the
de Blasio administration and the Department of
Education, under Chancellor Richard Carranza,
have made eff orts to focus on homeless stu-
dents. The department formally placed respon-
sibility for students in temporary housing with
two upper- level offi cials: Chris Caruso, senior
executive director of the Offi ce of Community
Schools, which helps under served students and
tries to improve attendance, and LaShawn Rob-
inson, the deputy chancellor for school climate
and wellness. They have increased the number
of regional managers and community coordi-
nators to help homeless students, and over the
past year, they have spent $15 million to, among
other things, hire more than 100 ‘‘Bridging the
Gap’’ social workers to aid the unstably housed
student population.
At P.S. 401, Shondelle Wilson, a social worker,
was appointed to care for the unstably housed
children, and Reginald Le Rouge was brought on
to coordinate eff orts for students in temporary
housing. I visited the school twice in June 2019.
When I fi rst met Wilson, she told me: ‘‘These
children have so much weight on them. Children
understand. We don’t give them credit for how
well they know their circumstances.’’
Every morning, Wilson, Le Rouge and the
principal, Deon Mitchell, began their day in the
cinder- block cafeteria with yellow painted radi-
ators, where many of the children ate the free
breakfast provided by the city. They assessed
how the children were — who was too tired or
too stressed to go directly into the classroom —
and set the tone for the day. During breakfast,
they oriented the children about what day and
month it was, because they said children who
switch schools a lot and miss days sometimes
lose the narrative thread.
One morning I joined the team before break-
fast began. The children were coming back after
a one-day holiday. Wilson wore a belted dress
and fl at sandals, and her hair was arranged in
a regal swirl atop her head. She took a deep
breath before she entered the auditorium,
where children who arrive early, before break-
fast is served, wait. A second grader whose hair
was threaded with beads sidled up to her. ‘‘This
is my beauty,’’ Wilson told me. The girl smiled
delightedly. ‘‘Are you looking for a hug?’’ Wilson
asked. The girl nodded yes. Wilson squeezed
her to her side and told her she would check in
when she had breakfast.Wilson then entered the cafeteria, where
workers were handing out pancakes, cereal and
previously frozen omelets in perfect semicir-
cles. She tried to make contact with each of the
unstably housed children at breakfast, except
for the kindergartners, whom she connects with
at lunch. They were bobbing and squirming at
their table, all chipmunk cheeks, glitter head-
bands and braids. She waved to them. ‘‘That’s
my kindergarten class,’’ she told me. ‘‘Some of
those kids are so smart,’’ she added proudly and
a little wistfully.
Wilson approached two boys with their heads
lying on their crossed arms, not eating break-
fast. ‘‘Good morning, brothers. You had a day
off. Did you do anything?’’ One brother shook
his head no. ‘‘Are you tired today?’’ They nodded.
‘‘Come, walk with Ms. Wilson. We are going to
get some water to splash on your face, and we
are going to have a great day today.’’
Wilson returned to the second grader with
the beads in her hair and sat next to her. ‘‘Good
morning. How was your day off ?’’
‘‘I did a lot of things. My mom made me lunch,
and I had strawberries on Oreo ice cream, and I
played with slime.’’
She paused and added, ‘‘I was excited to come
back today so I can have a new start with what
we talked about.’’
‘‘Oooooh,’’ Wilson beamed. Then she asked,
‘‘What did we talk about?’’
‘‘The relaxation response for when I get anx-
ious and upset,’’ the girl said solemnly.
The second grader transferred to P.S. 401 in
October 2018, before Wilson started working
there, and for a while she was known only as a
very smart, very competitive student who got
high grades. Then one day in November, she got
into a disagreement with a student in her class.
The teacher asked her to step outside to defuse
the situation and told her that she would come
out and speak to her in a moment.
Out in the hallway, the girl let out a piercing
scream and pulled a bulletin board down with
a huge crash. She ran through the halls, yell-
ing, throwing things and tearing down bulle-
tin boards. Security guards intervened. It took
Mitchell, the principal, a full half-hour to calm
her down. Mitchell said she had to take off herMae said her daughter
spent the first few days
taking pictures of baby
rats on glue traps in their
living space in the
shelter, marveling at their
long snouts and tails.