New York’s Bowery Mission Adapts Homeless Ministry to Coronavirus Restrictions

NEW YORK (RNS) — Almost every day for the past two years, Aaron Johnson, 37, has come to the Bowery Mission to eat a hot meal and see friends.

The oldest Christian rescue mission in New York City, the Bowery provides food, beds, showers, clothing and free medical services to the estimated 70,000 New Yorkers who don’t have permanent shelter.

For Johnson, the mission has been a “safe haven and friendly atmosphere.”

Now, his one place of stability is suddenly unstable.

As restrictions have taken effect in New York City to halt the spread of COVID-19, the Bowery Mission has had to change its operations virtually overnight.

This week, the mission replaced its hot meal service in its dining hall with to-go meals at the door. The chapel, where clients usually come in to socialize and escape inclement weather, is closed. The shower and clothing program is postponed as staff figure out how to continue it under new CDC restrictions. And volunteers — the heartbeat of the mission — have been asked to stay home at all but two of the Bowery’s six campuses in the New York Metro area.

The mission is still housing people — with 200 overnight shelter beds at their Tribeca campus and a few long-term residential programs that together house 77 people.

But the staff has moved the overnight beds farther apart, and things are being sanitized and cleaned more frequently. At all overnight…