NOV. 19, 2019
Written by Eliza Shapiro; Photographs by Brittainy Newman
Darnell, 8, lives in a homeless shelter and commutes 15 miles a day to school.
Sandivel shares a bedroom with her mother and four brothers. She is 10 and has moved seven times in the past five years.
The number of school-age children in New York City who live in shelters or “doubled up” in apartments with family or friends has swelled by 70 percent over the past decade — a crisis without precedent in the city’s history.
By day, New York’s 114,085 homeless students live in plain sight: They study on the subway and sprint through playgrounds. At night, these children sometimes sleep in squalid, unsafe rooms, often for just a few months until they move again. School is the only stable place they know.
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