Not all heroes wear capes. Sometimes all they need is a bright orange vest. The Bowery Residents Committee is an organization dedicated to providing unhoused New Yorkers nutritious meals, transitional housing and even the universal joy of reading. Books may not be the first thing you think of when helping those in need but the BRC knows that the transformative power of books can change a person’s life for the better.
Rick Akin, Director of Volunteer Services at the BRC believes that books are one of the greatest escapes for people living on the streets. While many volunteers with the BRC donate to clothing drives during the holiday season or spend their time offering food services, they might not consider the importance of giving away their old books. Akin says, “just because you’re unhoused doesn’t mean you don’t want recreational distractions and one of the easiest and simple ways is just to read a book.”
Akin does everything that he can to connect novels to people in need like partnering with local universities to host book drives. In the Spring of 2022 the BRC began working with Pace University, a private university in lower Manhattan, to coordinate donations for used books. This collaboration bridged gaps between students and the unhoused community in New York.
Stephanie Hsu, an Associate Professor at Pace and and Co-Chair of the English Department said, “We thought it was really important to imagine someone on the other side of your favorite book or a book you really like that person reading, and that would be a connection to someone who is unhoused in New York.” The book drive hosted by the BRC and in collaboration with Pace is making literature more accessible to communities that are underserved in the city.
Like Akin, Hsu agrees that books are an incredible way to escape and find pockets of peace while living in uncertain conditions.“Reading [is] a form of self-care because you can unplug, a way to control your environment and your headspace for a while. The students wanted to gift that to folks who are unhoused” she says. The books offer impoverished New Yorkers the ability to interact with fiction and have time to themselves without worrying about the hard realities they face daily.
In fact, Akin says that the books are so valued by the BRC clients that “The minute the books are there, the clients are already standing there waiting to check them out.” The great thing about the BRC libraries and distribution of novels is that the books are given freely and without expectation. If there is a client who falls in love with a book, they are under no obligation to give it back to the BRC, it is effectively theirs.
He says that the distribution of books sourced from the book drive happens very quickly. His office which is frequently filled with boxes of books is quickly cleared out the moment that he calls BRC facilities. These facilities are eager to offer their clients books because “It’s clear that they want something to read. They want that distraction, something that can take them out of the world that they can just enjoy on their own and in their own terms.”
The ability to select a book freely is an important point for both Akin and Hsu who agree that the unhoused should be able to read whatever they want whenever they would like to. The book drive collects novels from all genres and all reading levels to support the clients at the BRC. Not only are the unhoused given books to read but they are also offered autonomy and the ability to make their own choices, something that is hard to come by when living on the streets.
Akin hopes to grow the book drive in the future by collaborating with other universities and making the drive more accessible to the New York community. While Pace is the first collaboration, he hopes that it won’t be the last. If you are interested in supporting the work that the Bowery Residents Committee does, check out their website at https://www.brc.org/.
