Ameed Ademolu, a close-cropped and bespectacled nurse, descends the street-level stairs to the subway, clad in an orange and yellow vest and carrying a clipboard, paper and pencil. He halts, reaches into a pocket to unfold a K-95 mask and fits it over his mouth and nose. “The mask is for me,” he says, because “I’ve had people spit in my face.”
At the Fulton Street station in Downtown Manhattan, Mr. Ademolu encounters two men, one in his 20s and one older, the latter dependent on a cart piled with his belongings as a walker. The younger one is coherent but agitated, ripping up newspaper and scattering the pieces as he puffs on his vape. Both are homeless and have become friends after months on the subways.
Mr. Ademolu talks to them for half an hour. The older man declines Mr. Ademolu’s offer to have a shelter van pick him up, saying he knows that the shelter system cannot easily accommodate someone who cannot walk up and down stairs. The younger man decides he will go to a shelter. Mr. Ademolu takes the man upstairs to await the van.
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Nicole Gelinas is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor at City Journal. Follow her on Twitter here.
Photo by Andrew A. Smith/Getty Images