New York City workers have seemingly paid no mind to a homeless man who has been siphoning electricity to his tent in an East Village park, according to a report.
Fifty-four-year-old Abdur-Rashiyd “JK” Rivera’s tent has been staked at Tompkins Square park the past three months, the New York Post reports. Seventy-five feet of extension cords run to a nearby light post, bringing electricity to his shelter – powering his heater and bringing light to read books.
The Department of Homelessness and up to three other city agencies pay Rivera visits some days.
“The only thing the homeless services do, they come here, they ask if you’re alright and you say ‘Yes’ and they say, ‘Do you want to go to a shelter?’ I say ‘no’ and they leave,” Rivera told the Post.
Rivera says that only one city worker has seemed to take issue with his electricity set-up.
“I had a problem with the lady from the Department of Parks and Recreation,” he told the Post. “People could trip and everything and I understood that. She used to always at like 5:30, 6 in the morning unplug it and throw the cord over here.”
“I said ‘Ma’am, I could be sleeping when you do that and I not realizing it could die because I’m asleep and freeze to death,” he added.
After Rivera placed plastic cable covers on the cords and duct-taped them to the sidewalk, the woman from the Department of Parks and Recreation let up. He has to take down his tent at times, but only for a day or two to keep city officials at bay, according to the Post.
The makeshift lodging includes cardboard to insulate the tent’s walls, books to read – including his Koran, and a prayer mat.
The Bowery Mission, a nonprofit that has “served homeless and hungry New Yorkers since the 1870s,” says there are nearly 80,000 homeless people in the Big Apple, meaning 1 in every 106 (almost 1 percent) of the city’s 8 million inhabitants are homeless.
Additionally, former New York City Comptroller Scott M. Stringer released a report last March, which revealed the city spent $3.5 billion on homeless services in 2020. Based on the homeless population reported by the Bowery Mission and funds spent on homeless services in 2020, the city spends some $43,750 per homeless person annually, according to the Post.
“Whatever billions of dollars they’re spending that’s allotted for the homeless cause or whatever the case may be, I don’t see it,” Rivera told the outlet.
He noted that he had done time in prisons, including “Attica, Sing Sing, and Elmira,” and said the “shelter system is worse than Attica. That right there should tell you something.”