They might be homeless, but that’s not stopping this Brooklyn couple from doing their bit for the city. They spend their nights at a tiny park and during the day, do a better job of cleaning it than the local administration!
57-year-old Chris and 54-year-old Tammy are from Pennsylvania, but they drifted to Brooklyn after falling on hard times. Since then, they’ve been living on this small traffic island in the heart of Bay Ridge, and are doing everything they can to keep their surroundings clean.
“I’m homeless, my wife is homeless and what we do is we clean up the park,” Chris told Pix11 news. “We like to make it clean. We’re keeping it clean in many ways.”
“Every time they’re here, they’re sweeping, they’re picking up, because they want to have this clean for everybody, not just themselves,” Maria LaTourette, a resident of the nearby Senator Street, told NY Post. “They got rid of the hookers and drug dealers. They’re doing more than what the city does. The city takes care of everything else except what they’re supposed to be taking care of.”
Shelay Amadou, who also lives across the street, said he now feels safe using the park, thanks to the couple’s work. “In the past two years, you see people selling drugs everywhere,” he said. “My kids are scared. The only park we go to is this park, because Tammy and Chris kicked those people out of there.”
Chris and Tammy have even laid down a set of rules for what they now call ‘Paradise Park’. “Number one, you ain’t staying, number two you ain’t hooking out here, number three there ain’t no drug dealing, and four if you give me any s*** I will mess your a** up,” Tammy said.
But the couple agree that their little traffic island is really no paradise. “Everything’s hard when you’re on the bench,” Tammy said. “I know we take a risk at night taking these people out. You don’t know if someone is coming with a ball bat, you don’t know if they are coming with a knife or a gun, we don’t sleep very much. There are also racoons and squirrels and rats. There is one squirrel I call ‘Numb Nuts’ because he goes into our things.”
They survive on soup kitchen handouts, shower at a drug rehab facility, and use the bathrooms at a gas-station and laundry. Chris said he blames the local government for not doing their part to create jobs. “I blame this all on Mayor de Blasio,” he said. “He ain’t doing nothing for the homeless.”
Source: Pix11
