Closing Time At Union Station

Shafiq Abdussabur pulled up to Union Station to make his latest campaign pitch — and found himself calling an ambulance for a man seeking shelter inside the train stop rather than crusading for votes.

“He’s gotta go to the hospital — I know someone who just committed suicide who just told me what he just told me. This is serious shit,” another woman, Dee, told Abdussabur upon hearing Fernandez utter those words.

Fernandez was supposed to be taking medication twice a day to control his seizures as well as blood thinners for clots in his legs. ​“But I didn’t take it today,” he admitted.

“I don’t wanna walk away from you tonight and not help you,” Abdussabur told Fernandez. ​“If I arrange for you to go to the hospital so they can evaluate you, will you be honest with them today?”

Yes, Fernandez responded. Ten minutes later, he was strapped into a stretcher, clutching a piece of paper containing Abudssabur’s cell phone number. 

“I’m a little suicidal right now… I’m sad, I’m depressed, I’m hurting,” Eddie Fernandez, a 48-year-old bound to a wheelchair since hurting his leg in an epileptic fit, told the mayoral hopeful soon after Abdussabur arrived at 11 p.m.

Abdussabur, a former cop turned one of four Democratic candidates for the city’s top elected office, made that visit Tuesday night while at least 30 other people without stable housing slept on benches inside the station.

Dozens of individuals curled up in the station’s seats and corners, as well as alongside the sidewalk just outside its doors. That has become a nightly scene around the station over the past few years, as the onset of the pandemic, shrinking shelter options, and an affordable housing crisis have pushed more people onto the streets.

“I spent two years as a patrol officer on midnights. We never had concentrated homelessness like this,” the 56-year-old retired sergeant observed. 

Abdussabur arrived at Union Station hours after his campaign released a proposed plan to reduce homelessness. That plan calls for converting underutilized city-owned properties into sanctioned and supervised resource hubs for people experiencing homelessness, made up of tiny homes and tents where people unable to get into apartments or shelters could take refuge. (Read about a structured tent city model in Colorado here that Abudssabur said he wants to emulate.)

Spreading the Walgreens

Before it was time to call an ambulance, Eddie Fernandez was one of several people who approached Abdussabur inside Union Station to talk politics and exchange personal stories.

“The theory when you’re campaigning is homeless people don’t vote, so why give it much attention? The fact that they don’t vote is the exact reason we need to be doing this harder than anything else,” said Abdussabur. During his visit he distributed a handful of $15 Walgreens gift cards to those camped out at the station throughout Tuesday night, sometimes as a one-off exchange and sometimes as an introduction to himself and his candidacy. 

The issue of housing and homelessness has already become an inevitable topic of debate during this year’s campaign cycle, in part because of outrage over the public bulldozing of a three-year-old homeless encampment on the West River by the current city administration this past spring. The State Department of Transportation has said it plans to dismantle another encampment of people living together by the train tracks off Ella Grasso Boulevard by Lamberton Street due to safety concerns after a man was killed by a passing train back in February. Union Station has become one of the few default places for homeless people to go.

Many arrive at the Union Avenue train station to try to rest inside the heated building until 1 a.m., at which point security guards and police clear out the space for routine cleaning. (Officials are supposedly amping up those cleaning measures following a bed bug infestation spanning the station’s seating area — read about that in the New Haven Register here.) Up to 40 people line the outside of the station until the doors are unlocked at 4 a.m. when train rides resume. Others have told the Independent they travel to Union Station in the morning to use the sinks and bathrooms to clean themselves up before a new day begins. 

“When people see homeless people, they see empty space,” Ali Dillard, one of the men seeking shelter at the station told Abdussabur Tuesday night.

While most of those inside the station pulled hats or blankets over their heads to block out the overhead lights in hopes of getting some shut eye, a small group of people convened around Abdussabur, curious as to what he was doing inside the train station at 11 p.m.

“What’s up?” one woman named Dee inquired as Dillard enumerated the ways in which those without housing are disrespected interpersonally and politically. Fernandez also approached to participate in the conversation.

“My name’s Shafiq Abudssabur. I’m running for mayor.”

When? Dee asked. 

In September, Abdussabur replied. What, he wondered, would they like to see a mayor prioritize and accomplish?

“We need housing!” Dee shot back.

“Services,” Fernandez said in a hushed voice.

What kinds of services? Abdussabur asked. ​“Are you on food stamps? Do you get social security?”

Fernandez, 48, claimed that his niece handled his benefits for him, but kept them all for herself. He said he’d been living at Union Station for five months. He’d experienced housing instability for years at a time in the past, but as a self-certified ​“ladies’ man,” he’d always ​“had chicks who let me sleep at their house.”

More recently he has faced growing health concerns and struggled to communicate with both bureaucratic agencies and the family members he said he’s dependent on for help. He said he has fallen into a deeper state of depression and isolation.

Doctors ​“always just think I’m bullshitting,” Fernandez asserted of his encounters with the healthcare system. 

“So, when you talk to the psychiatrist,” Abdussabur began …

“…I’m not truthful,” Fernandez finished the sentence. ​“I tell them I’m all right. I tell them I’m fine.” After several negative experiences at the hospital, he said, he gave up on trying to express his needs. 

“My question to you is: Are you fine?”

“No,” Fernandez said. ​“My heart is hurting.” 

“I can give you gift cards. I can give you money,” Abdussabur told Fernandez. ​“But if you’re not honest about your situation, it won’t make a difference. That starts with loving yourself first.”

“Yeah, I gotta be honest this time,” Fernandez said, his eyes welling up with tears. He agreed to go to the hospital for a psych evaluation.

“If it doesn’t go the way it needs to, you call me tomorrow,” Abdussabur said. 

“When I grow up one day, I’d like to be big and strong just like you,” he told Abdussabur. ​“Your neck stronger than a motherfucker.”

Everyone Out

Minutes later, two EMTs arrived on the scene, assisting Fernandez out of his wheel chair and strapping him into a stretcher. They told Abdussabur they were taking Fernandez to Waterbury. ​“All the hospitals nearby are over capacity mental health wise,” one explained.

As Abdussabur took off to return to his own home, he said, ​“We cured people tonight. Now we know his story.”

“Homelessness can’t be classroom theology. We need boots on the ground.”

At 1 a.m., a security guard walked from bench to bench, knocking on the wood to wake those sleeping in the station.

“Before Covid, there were about 20 people here on a nightly basis,” said the guard, who said he’d worked at Union Station for ten years. ​“Now that number’s doubled to around 40. It’s very stressful — most of them have mental illnesses. Sometimes I have to call an ambulance — it’s a challenging job.”

“I feel bad for them. I want to say, ​‘I’m here to help you guys. I understand your situation,’” he said. But he referenced a list of written rules supposedly governing the station — not even passengers are supposed to sleep on the benches, the policy reads, unless in the case of a ​“mass transportation failure.” 

Dozens of people slowly awakened and walked out the doors as two cops patrolled the floor of the station. 

One by one, they walked over to a nearby dumpster and scavenged pieces of cardboard from the trash. Laying the boards under the station’s overhang, they made their beds to pass another night — or for a few hours, when four in the morning rolled around again.