Cold Comfort for the Homeless

By Amy Wilentz

The arctic blast that swept down from Canada and froze the face of the nation last week made Americans look like motley snowmen. Out they ventured in funny fur hats, layered sweaters, mittens, turned-up collars and ski masks. The luckiest ones spent as much time as possible near the radiator, as little as necessary out of doors.

But the cold snap froze the image of a different America onto the front pages of newspapers and television screens: people huddling outside overnight with little but the coats on their backs. Under blankets, newspapers and garbage bags, they slept on city steam grates to keep warm, huddled over fires in vacant lots, or hid out from the freezing wind in cardboard warrens constructed in the tunnels beneath railroad or subway stations.

The nation's homeless population has risen by 25% in the past year, according to the National Coalition for the Homeless. Desperately seeking relief from the killing cold, the homeless filled shelters to overflowing as the windchill factor in several major cities dropped below zero.

The freezing temperatures were matched by an icy militancy among some vagrants. In Chicago, 30 homeless men broke into vacant apartments in a housing project and had to be chased out by guards. In Oakland, police arrested 17 protesters who were part of a group that seized three empty Victorian houses for several hours. Some cities have reacted to the winter plight of the homeless by opening doors that are usually shut after 5 o'clock. Washington's city council last week authorized the use of municipal buildings, including the city hall, as overnight shelters when the temperature falls to 25 degrees. Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia and Chicago have taken similar action.

In Los Angeles, Federal Appeals Court Judge Harry Pregerson did as much for the homeless as any municipal organization. He searched out an obscure legal provision permitting the use of federal property for emergency shelter, then targeted a 134-acre supply center as a likely site. Last week, as the city shivered in unusual 36 degrees weather, the shelter opened with 100 beds, and 100 more will be added in the next few weeks. "I felt a deep concern for people sleeping on the streets," says Pregerson. "It's a disgrace to our whole country."

On the other side of the continent, Kalif Beacon, 45, has set up his Temple of the Rainbow Food Kitchen in an empty lot on Manhattan's run-down Lower East Side. Beacon, who is homeless himself and wears a stovepipe hat that makes him look like a character out of Dickens, keeps a flame burning constantly under his 20-gal. pots of rice, soup and beans. The New York City kitchen, which serves as many as 1,000 meals a day, is not his first such endeavor. Beacon, who calls himself the Fire Tender, says he has set up similar "temples" in other cities across the country.

On the Lower East Side, street people hang around the temple, keeping warm near the fire and eating off paper plates. Volunteers help out with the cooking; neighbors and local businessmen contribute food and wood for the stove.

"How can these people help themselves when all they think about is food?" asks the Fire Tender. "Give them food, and then they can put their heads and hands to work fighting misery." Although the city plans to evict Beacon from the vacant lot to build subsidized housing on the site, the Fire Tender does not intend to let his flame go out. His next temple, he says, will be in Spanish Harlem.

With reporting by Elaine Lafferty/Los Angeles and Raji Samghabadi/New York