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By Nathan Brockman

John Heuss House, the homeless drop-in center of Wall Street, is gone. It happened quickly, as do some deaths.

Heuss House was opened in 1988. Over two decades, it served some 20,000 clients, received stellar city-review ratings, and expanded operations into the South Ferry area of Manhattan. The drop-in shelter was operated in partnership between Trinity Wall Street and the city. Trinity convened a board and provided human resources and accounting services, and the city owned the building and covered operating costs through annual grants.

Over a six-month period in 2009, there was a warning of difficulty with its city contract renewal, a period of back-and-forth with the
city and other outreach agencies, and then the decision to close in June. Now Heuss House is empty.

Some familiar with the situation believe Heuss House was the victim of a change in philosophy at the city’s Department of Human Services (DHS), one that believed drop-in shelters were no longer helpful. Others, noting the political and financial capital to be had in New York City social services contracts, theorize that Heuss House, a relatively small-sized provider, simply got eaten by a bigger fish.

At any rate, one day John Heuss House was here, and the next it was gone the way of the subway token. The congregation of Trinity Wall Street began to wonder: how, then, shall we serve?

“It would be a sad story if it ended there,” said Trinity Wall Street’s vicar and Heuss House board chairperson, the Rev. Canon Anne Mallonee.

At the first signs of trouble, Canon Mallonee convened a group of congregation and staff members to determine the way forward, led by the Rev. Matthew Heyd, Trinity’s director of Faith in Action. The vicar and rector issued public statements that “the landscape might be changing, but Trinity’s commitment to homeless people will not.”

Opinions on the nature of that commitment were strongly held. One prominent viewpoint was that the parish should fight the city’s decision through public protest. Others thought that acting in such a way might have unintended consequences for other partnerships between the parish and city. At a basic level, some questioned Trinity’s adeptness at welcoming homeless people into parish life and suggested that there should be much more congregational involvement in its homeless ministry if it was to have one. Others wanted Trinity to use its influence to advocate citywide on behalf of the homeless population, particularly homeless children— to become a new kind of “mother church.”

Eventually, after meetings with Department of Human Services commissioner Rob Hess, and local organizations, the group submitted a plan that had four distinct areas of emphasis. Trinity would:

• Maintain a visible outreach presence in Lower Manhattan, including convening a coalition of faith communities for feeding, sheltering, and providing basic services.
• Find new ways to welcome homeless people into Trinity’s common life.
• Explore how it might extend our commitment to “raise a generation of leaders” through support for the 15,000 children in city shelters.
• Advocate alongside other faith communities a fair and compassionate homeless policy.

Heyd and members of the Trinity congregation are working with the Manhattan Outreach Consortium, which currently has teams supporting people who have been on the street for nine months or more. The MOC has the official New York City Department of Homeless Services contract. At the same time, the Bowery Residents’ Committee, through a partnership with the Downtown Alliance, and Trinity, is providing complementary outreach through housing, medical and psychological services, and detox.

Congregational and staff volunteers have begun packing bags with food to be distributed from the church entryway at Broadway and Wall Street. During Lent 2010, the program will serve its 5,000th bag. Anumber of visitors accepting food each week were part of the John Heuss House community. One such person, Detroit native Eileen Holliday, said she didn’t like the other centers in the area and was sleeping outside more now that Heuss House was closed.

Heuss House was uncharacteristic in its size and its spirit—more church than social service agency. It was a small community where people prayed, ate, and sobered up together. When the homeless had Heuss House as a place to go a few yards from the capitol of capital, Wall Street was a more realistic place, less fantasy. In the Heuss House closure, reality has been masked a little. The buildings only get glassier and higher, the faces washed and whiter.

Maybe the ghosts of the homeless who died while known to Heuss House will stay, though, cavorting with the pirates, founding fathers, and Depression-era suicides of this old, odd tip of the island, spray painting the sidewalk in front of the New York Stock Exchange: John Heuss House was here.

Nathan Brockman is editor of Trinity News. 

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