Permanent Supportive Housing Spotlights Challenges After Homelessness

Meet the Staff

Most Lenniger residents are assigned case managers who connect them to the resources that give supportive housing its name.

Mr. Mercado’s is Marcos Gonzalez, 31, athletic and personable, partial to braids and Gucci glasses. “When I first started working here, I was dressing very professionally, and I found out that it was actually intimidating a lot of my clients,” he said.

Residents with more complex needs have been assigned to Phil Ricciardi, 33, the Lenniger’s social worker, a former cook, tall, laconic and Eeyore-like, given to pronouncements like “This is my favorite job, but only because the others were so bad.” (Like many social service providers, the Lenniger sees a fair degree of turnover. Several staff members, including Mr. Ricciardi, left during the reporting of this story.)

One morning in March, Mr. Ricciardi called a client and left a message: “Are you going to be coming downstairs, Diane? I believe the psychiatrist is still here. OK. Please come soon.”

Hours later, Diane Covington, 63 and gaunt, wearing an orange hoodie under a fur-collared parka, met him in the conference room. She had two goals: overcoming a decades-long heroin and crack addiction, and getting treatment for H.I.V.

“It’s not so much the addiction, it’s the illness that has me at this point,” she said. “I’m nothing now. I really want to go and get myself together. I’ll do a detox, 90 days.”

Mr. Ricciardi suggested St. Barnabas Hospital nearby, where another client had been connected to a roster of doctors.

“St. Barnabas,” she mused. “They don’t provide individuals the real energy of care.” Besides, she said, she wanted to move out of the rough neighborhood.

“If you want to move,” Mr. Ricciardi said bluntly, “it would be very helpful if they see that you actually are paying your rent.” One in five supportive housing tenants at the Lenniger is behind on rent, though no one has been evicted since 2017.

Ms. Covington reluctantly agreed to go.

Ms. Covington promised she would see him in the morning. After she left, Mr. Ricciardi predicted she would not show. “I’ve known her for two years, and it’s been this maybe 50 times.”

He knocked on her door early the next day. “I’m getting ready,” she called out.

Another caseworker, Irma Mendez, stopped by for a pep talk. Ms. Covington was not her client, but Ms. Mendez had lost her own mother to AIDS decades ago. “I told her, ‘You’re a survivor,’” Ms. Mendez said.

But two hours later, Ms. Covington had not come.

Lenniger staff members said they did what they could without much leverage.

“You try to guide them and navigate them to making more beneficial decisions,” Mr. Gonzalez said, “but ultimately they’re the captain of their own ship.”

A Party in the Basement

On the rainy afternoon before Good Friday, the Lenniger hosted an Easter party in the basement’s windowless multipurpose room. The ’90s R&B hit “This Is How We Do It” blasted while two grave-looking adults in bunny suits handed out decorating supplies.

Demi Sarita’s 2-year-old son drew on an egg with a marker. Ms. Sarita, 26 at the time, said she had moved from Florida, where she lived in her car, in part for New York’s superior social safety net.

Ms. Sarita, who has bipolar disorder, spent three years in a family shelter before landing at the Lenniger, where she had another son.

She said her life was coming together. She was studying to be a radiology technician. “I’m just using this as a steppingstone,” she said.

A few weeks later, she was feeling buoyant, but “a little out of it” — she had just started on lithium. She had also taken a job at a nearby Smashburger.

Ms. Sarita did not stay long at Smashburger. The Lenniger said that she was no longer working there but was doing “OK.”