Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 13, 1990 TAG: 9006130184
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
It suits the needs of its inhabitants, who number perhaps 100 and sometimes call themselves the Mole People.
This may be the most stable homeless settlement in New York City, although some of the old-timers would not describe it that way.
After 15 years in the tunnel, they do not consider themselves homeless. They have plywood shanties and cinder-block bunkers with rugs, beds, night stands, wood and gas stoves, paintings on the walls, pets in the yard.
But the quiet life along the Hudson River is becoming problematic, both for the Mole People and a neighboring group of squatters called the Rotunda Gang because of their home beneath the park's traffic circle at 79th Street.
During the last two weeks the Parks Department has rousted the Rotunda Gang from the round arcade it inhabited for years.
Down in the 2 1/2-mile-long tunnel, Amtrak crews are laying track to bring trains through for the first time in 10 years, and the Mole People are wondering how they will coexist with locomotives.
And there is the worrisome news from downtown: the evictions of the homeless from train stations and subway platforms.
"We'd like to keep out the riffraff," said Joseph Milan, 44, who built a shanty on the railroad land last summer. "Around here we show responsibility. We go to work in the morning. We don't steal. We don't do drugs. We don't need those crackheads and addicts and alcoholics from the stations branching out here."
The several dozen members of the Rotunda Gang, who have moved to other parts of Riverside Park, blame newcomers for some of the problems that contributed to their eviction: drunken knife fights, muggings, crack dealing, and hookups of lights and television sets to the park's electrical system.
"We tried to keep this a nice area for the public," said Michael McDowell, 35, who moved into the rotunda three years ago. "But the people from downtown came, and they have no pride. They sit around and curse and spit and play loud music. A lot of them are pandhandlers - that's the lowest. God gave you two hands, you should do something. With pandhandling you lose all self-respect, and we know what they do with that money - drugs."
The Rotunda Gang and the Mole People are generally middle-aged men - white, black, Hispanic - who keep to themselves, although some live with girlfriends or share meals with neighbors.
They spoke of past bouts with drugs or alcohol and mental illness, but most interviewed seemed sober and lucid.
Some work at outside jobs, go to school or survive on government checks mailed to churches or friends. Probably most are self-employed.
They go off with shopping carts collecting scrap metal, cans, bottles, books and magazines to sell or redeem at recycling centers.
They go to public showers, take their clothes to self-service laundries and clip coupons to shop in the supermarket.
In the evening they stroll along the river, read, listen to music, and gossip with neighbors. They keep in shape by playing basketball in the park and using old railroad ties for weight lifting.
In one sense they are historical restorationists. The mud flats along the Hudson were home to squatters when the railroad came in the mid-1800s, and there was a full-fledged shantytown until Robert Moses decided to put a park and a highway up the West Side in the 1930s.
Moses, the city parks commissioner and master builder, covered the New York Central railroad tracks.
He built the park's promenades on top of the 75-foot-wide tunnel from 123rd Street down to 72nd Street, where the tracks emerge into the former railroad yard now owned by Donald Trump.
The tunnel was uninhabited in 1974, when a 27-year-old man named Joe moved in. He still lives there, which is why he asked that his surname not be published.
"I don't want my kids to know I'm here," he said. "They think I live on Madison Avenue. I've got a mailing address there, and when they come to town I borrow a guy's apartment, put my name on the door - it works out all right. You live down here, you learn to adapt."
by CNB