In their trademark blue jackets and hoodies, formerly homeless members of the Doe Fund gathered Tuesday under the vaulted ceiling of Grand Central Terminal to honor the woman whose death led to the fund's creation.
She was known as Momma Doe, an Eastern European woman who took refuge in the terminal in the 1980s. She was chased away by police on Christmas Eve in 1985, and forced to spend the night in bone-chilling cold. She died on a bench there the next day.
"We started the Doe Fund, after Momma Doe died on Christmas Day in 1985, to help provide opportunity for people I had been feeding here for 700 nights in a row," said George McDonald, the founder of the Doe Fund.
The Doe Fund runs Ready, Willing and Able, a program that provides formerly homeless and incarcerated men work in return for money, housing, and an opportunity to land a private sector job to help them become self-sufficient.
Clutching electronic candles, standing shoulder to shoulder, members of the program sang songs and shared stories of how the Doe Fund transformed their lives.
Craig Twiggs joined the program in 2016, after serving 27 years in state prison for murder.
"All I had was $40 and a bus ticket after doing all that time," he said. "Nothing else to show for it, nowhere else to turn to but what I knew."
Statistics released by the city Department of Social Services shows a tight housing market coupled with soaring income inequality has led to more homeless people on New York streets.
The city's most recent daily homeless census, taken last Thursday, counted 60,887 homeless people in the city, including a staggering 22,377 children.
"There are no ups and downs in the homeless population in New York City; it's just been a straight upward incline since 1980 when Ronald Reagan was president and the federal government disinvested in housing," McDonald said. "We haven't missed a beat, and it will continue to go up because we're not investing in housing."
Christmas was not a day off for these men. After paying tribute to Mamma Doe, they returned to their jobs — work they hope will lead to the gift of housing and a self-sufficient life.