Charles Warner describes homelessness and caseworker problems

Good afternoon.

My name is Charles Warner.

I'm a Navy vet who was honorably discharged in May 2000.

I came back home to New York City to deal with family issues as I became unemployed in another state.

When I came back to New York, I immediately looked into the process of how to get my own place, get established on my own feet.

And what I've come to find out is that I was already homeless the entire time I was living in New York because I didn't have a place of my own.

According to regulations or laws or whatever the stipulations were,

the requirement to get services to become a housed veteran means that you have to be documented.

As not having a residence of your own.

You have to be documented of being on the street or being in a shelter.

I came back here in February 2009, and I was living in my parents'home from February 2009 to my father's death.

Three years ago.

Because of that, I was technically homeless, but I was still in a house because an unattainable of getting services because I had a roof over my head.

But I was still homeless.

So I actually had to go into...

Dire situations where I ended up getting evicted from that residence because the income I was guaranteeing from my job as a security guard,

by the way, at homeless shelters for veterans, I mean, at homeless shelters for migrants.

OK, that I couldn't afford my own place, that I ended up going from working as a security guard in a shelter for migrants

to live in my own shelter as a veteran.

That's an oxymoron.

And then every time I spoke to a person at ICL about my plan to get out of the shelter system,

There was not a single person interested in what my plan was.

No one in the entire time I was there from August to April.

Ask me what my plan actually was.

My initial caseworker was...

Was no longer working there just a week into the time of helping me.

For whatever reason, his employment there was terminated.

And he was replaced, and I was added to the itinerary of another caseworker who was...

Frankly was blatantly rude to me right from the start.

Because what Miss Berry did is that she apparently was looking all over the shelter for me, unaware that I had a job that was not earning enough money as security.

I was also just started back as a part-time student to complete my bachelor's degree.

And at the same time, I was also independently looking for a place to live.

And she was expecting me to stay in the shelter.

Waiting for whatever services, because she said she was looking all over for me.

Mind you, I had a cell phone that was in service, and I also had email, and they had all of this contact information, but she could not find me because she didn't see me in my cubicle.

Also, she made it blatantly.

clear whenever she had an issue with me to go public with it because she will have these conversations with me right there at the security entrance.

But when I'm in the back in her office and speaking up about these issues,

I need to quiet down because people might hear.

But she's going to be blatant and obvious right there in the doorway with me.

Also, the last time I dealt with her, she actually had called one of our colleagues over into my rooming area.

And as a witness, as if I'm going to get hostile.

But she's the one causing the hostility.