Pedro has grown used to life on the streets, but he may never get used to being overlooked: “Excuse me, could you tell me – excuse me, excuse me, can you tell me the time? And they just pass you by and they just go like that [waves hand in air]. And people out there have no idea that it is okay to say, ‘No.’”
The story of homelessness is really lots of different stories, as told by people interviewed by “Sunday Morning” at The Bowery Mission in New York City.
David: “I don’t have family; my mother’s dead, father’s dead.”
Kenny: “I got sick, wound up losing my work, and everything.”
Joseph: “You just worry about staying alive, you know?”
The need for help is obvious.
Yvette: “I can’t stand out here no more.”
Mahindranah: “It’s very tough.”
Lenn: “My life is a nightmare.”
And yet, the problem seems stubbornly hard to solve.
CBS News
Mike Coffman, the mayor of Aurora, Colorado, wanted to try something different. “We’re all confronted with the extraordinary challenges,” he said. “This was really a way in which I felt that I could understand it better.”
Coffman said he wanted to immerse himself in homelessness for a week.
Correspondent Kelefa Sanneh asked, “What kind of ground rules did you set for yourself?”
“Don’t bring any money or access to money,” Coffman said. “Don’t bring any food. So, I had a backpack, I had a…
