Anais Nin

Review of New York City Rescue Mission

Luckily my life is not so desperately pathetic tha...

Luckily my life is not so desperately pathetic that I need to wait for a raffle to decide whether I am going to get a bedbug laden bunk for the evening because if this were my only option I would stand in the broken elevator of the Mission until it plummeted 6 floors and killed me. I only stayed for a brief moment so will just give a handful of quick observations.

It is supposed to be an emergency shelter but people live there for literal years. There is no help with housing or job training and people who are trying to better themselves by getting jobs or going to school lose thier beds if they are not in them by 3:45 pm. There is racism, favoratism, laziness (Shayquan is easily the laziest and most useless "Ambassador" there) malaise, food poisoning, unrelenting filth and the knowledge that you are nothing more than a bed to fill. You are given a list of rules when you arrive but they are not followed and there are people who do not have to follow them or are not punished according to them. The only positive reviews here are written by people who like to pat themselves on the back because they donated, no one who has been subjected to the hypocrisy, toxicity, filth, injustice, assault from male clients, complete lack of care and never ending exhaustion of this place has ever left a positive review.

That's because it is not a positive place. I am lucky enough to be in a position where I can and will rise above this and I have nothing but compassion and pity for those who are trapped in that unhelful, unjust, and downright ugly situation. Jose, Chuck, Cheryl and Lea are good people who deserve better than this place. Aside from them, well...I'd go into a city shelter before subjecting myself to this madhouse ever again.