By:Scott Brinton
It was just after 7 p.m. last Thursday, and the temperature, in the high 20s, was dropping fast in Midtown Manhattan. Stephen Hoffman, a 32-year resident of North Bellmore, finished loading crates of food in the white New York City Coalition for the Homeless van that was parked in the icy slush beside St. Bartholomew's Church.
Hoffman, 59, a marketing director by day, has given his Thursday nights to the coalition for 12 years, making him one of the non-profit agency's longest-serving volunteers.
Last week, as other volunteers stowed food in a second van, homeless people kept stopping by, asking for meals. The trouble was that time was running out. The two vans had to get going. The volunteers had to make precisely timed stops where other homeless people would be waiting.
The coalition distributes business cards in homeless communities across Manhattan, saying precisely when and where its volunteers will be to give out food and clothes. If a van is late, the homeless won't wait long before leaving, and the coalition's credibility with the people it serves will be jeopardized.
Hoffman and two other volunteers piled into their van, and within minutes they were cruising beneath the twinkling lights of Park Avenue, making their way south through a sea of stretch limos and taxicabs, headed for Manhattan's shadowy recesses that the homeless call home.
Seven nights a week, the coalition provides more than 700 meals for the homeless, said James Taylor, a paid coalition worker who helps to prepare meals. "As long as there are people on the street, they're hungry," he said.
Jill Waldman, of Brooklyn, is a 20-something paralegal who plans to attend law school and has volunteered for the coalition since she was 13. Waldman, who has become a good friend of Hoffman's, said volunteering "really puts you in touch with the [homeless] population. You see very concretely that there are people on the streets who can't afford to eat."
There is an obvious camaraderie among the 45 coalition volunteers who regularly make food runs. Hoffman most often rides with Waldman, Rob Nadelson, an attorney at the U.N., and Meg McConnell, an economist for the Federal Reserve. As volunteers drive along on runs, they chat about their families, work, movies, food, politics.
In the early 1990s, Hoffman got interested in helping the homeless when he started his current job with Shalom International in Manhattan, and his two children, Allison and Beth, both Mepham High School graduates, went off to college. Previously, he had worked in Connecticut, where he saw few signs of poverty. But in the city, he found the homeless in all directions, and he felt a deep sense of sorrow over their plight. "It was a rude awakening to see all of the homeless people sitting in doorways," he said.
Hoffman and his wife of 34 years, Frieda, believe strongly in volunteering. Frieda, who owned the Personal Training Advantage gym in Bellmore before selling it three months ago, was named a 2002 Volunteer of the Year by the Long Island Crisis Center in Bellmore.
Stephen Hoffman eventually combined his service for the coalition with a passion of his young adulthood, photography. With an old, beat-up 35mm Nikkormat camera, Hoffman shot photographs of the homeless he encountered each week. Over three years, Hoffman filled some 400 rolls of film and captured street life as few photographers have.
In a rented Manhattan darkroom, Hoffman, a self-taught photographer, spent hundreds of hours printing his stunning black-and-white images by hand. Indeed, the project was a labor of love. He paid for all the materials himself.
He has since challenged himself with new projects. He photographed the usually camera-shy Lubavich Jewish community in Brooklyn over 18 months, and he is currently documenting two Queens Hindu temples.
Hoffman's dedication to his projects has brought him a good deal of acclaim. His work has been exhibited in major shows at the Museum of the City of New York and the New York City Library on 42nd Street. And his photography has received favorable reviews in a number of publications, including New York magazine.
Despite the long hours that Hoffman now spends preparing for exhibits, he still makes his weekly runs with the Coalition for the Homeless. Last Thursday, as always, his first stop was a small lot below the FDR Drive on Manhattan's East Side. A police van was parked in the yellow half-light of the overhead sodium lamps. A small line of homeless had assembled, pacing, shivering. They wore light clothing when parkas were needed. They were grateful for their meals -- hot stew in Styrofoam cups, oranges, bagels and milk. They repeated phrases like "God bless you" to the volunteers.
Hoffman spotted a regular. "Ninety percent of the time you see this guy," the volunteer said. "He's just stoned out of his mind." The man approached Hoffman, wondering if he had any socks to offer. Hoffman rifled through a box of clothes in the van and returned with two pairs for the man, who was probably in his 30s or 40s.
The man, who didn't appear high this time, slipped away into the night. Hoffman noted that many on the streets are addicted to drugs, or mentally ill, or both. Despite the frigid weather, they often refuse to go to a shelter, believing the meager belongings they carry with them will get stolen when they fall asleep.
Hoffman next drove to what coalition volunteers call Housing Court, a parking lot squeezed between New York City's Housing and Family courts in the middle of Chinatown. Many homeless people gather at night in the tiny park beside the lot. On any given Thursday, a hundred people may show up here looking for food. Two lines usually form -- one for the mostly Asian women who work in downtown sweatshops and live in cold-water flats, and one for the homeless, who are primarily men.
There are two lines because arguments often break out among the men and women. The homeless think the women, whom they consider to be well off because they've got apartments, are stealing their food.
Last Thursday, there was only one line. The Chinese New Year had kept most of the women away. After receiving their food, the homeless scattered to points around the park, eating alone as they stood in the dark.
Hoffman's next stop was the Staten Island ferry depot, where he pulled the van to the side of the road between two cement barricades. The only light came from the skyscrapers across the way. The temperature had dropped to the low 20s, and a strong wind had kicked up off the Hudson River.
Again the homeless came, seeking meals and socks. Again they recited "Thank you" and "God bless you." One man said his name was James Walter, a Vietnam veteran who was spending his first night on the street. He had just gotten out of jail. He said he was incarcerated for drug possession, then sent back to jail because he was caught with a syringe -- a parole violation, he said.
Walter had lived with his mother before he was sent to jail, but she died recently, and he had to sell her home to pay off her medical bills. He had $1,000 in the bank, and was spending $500 this month to keep his belongings in a Brooklyn storage unit. He planned to spend the other $500 in February to keep his possessions there another month. After that, he wasn't sure what would happen to his things. He claimed to have 59,000 comic books that he would sell to live off.
"I think I'll make it," Walter said, smiling wryly.
Around 8:30 p.m., the coalition van took off for the Provident and Sunshine hotels, Chinatown flophouses near the Bowery. Hoffman climbed a narrow staircase up a flight to take a box of food to the Sunshine. The smell of urine was pungent in the air.
Hoffman entered the hotel through a metal gate. A clerk greeted him from behind a closed-in desk. The dimly lit, ash-gray foyer was full of cigarette smoke. Two men were sitting on a bench, talking. Nearby was a hall of closet-size bedrooms that smelled like a subway toilet. Hoffman dropped the box of food in the foyer, called out "coalition" and left quickly.
He made three more stops around Midtown before ending his run at Penn Station, where he got out. Nadelson, the U.N. lawyer, returned the van to St. Bartholomew's Church. Hoffman hopped aboard the LIRR, and by 10:45 he was back at home in suburban North Bellmore, a world away from the places he had been that night.
