October 10th 2019 | World Homeless Day
Bringing awareness to the problems surrounding housing and homelessness in local communities around the world.
United Way of the Valley & Greater Utica Area partnered with WKTV to bring attention to the issues here in the Mohawk Valley and how we are addressing them with local partnerships.
This past year, in 17 years of doing this, I've never seen our shelters right at capacity," Steve Darman, of Mohawk Valley and Homeless Coalition said. "Most of our population, and its on any given day, is 150 to 200 people, will be sheltered homeless, in one of our five emergency shelters in Oneida County.
Larry Hajdasz was once homeless, but was fortunate enough to seek out the services he needed to get himself off the street. Now he's working for the Municipal Housing Authority. His job is to try and connect with the homeless population. "One of the things they asked me was if I'd be willing to go look under bridges for homeless people, and I said I certainly would. Having experienced that myself, I would have no problem going out and trying to be helpful to others that are still suffering from that.
Not everyone is living under bridges, or out on the streets. Larry tells us there are a number of people that fit the criteria of homeless, but you'd probably never even know it. "I know people that are working that are homeless, and can't afford to get into their own apartment. I know people that are on disability, and they're getting money from Social Security, but again they can't afford to get into a house.
View this 4-day series by clicking the links below for each day. To help United Way make a difference in our community click here to donate!
Monday, October 7, 2019
Tuesday, October 8, 2019
Wednesday, October 9, 2019
Thursday, October 10, 2019
