City Limits: For Homeless Families, NYC’s Hotel Shelters Pose a Challenge: The Food
Isabel and her adult daughter, who has cerebral palsy and has difficulty chewing and swallowing, entered New York City’s shelter system a little over a year ago.
The pair, who moved here from Peru, have been placed in different hotels around the city, and recently moved to a hotel-turned-shelter in Manhattan. There’s no kitchen there for families to use, as is the case in the vast majority of hotels that have been converted into city shelters, so the staff serve residents three meals a day.
But feeding her daughter food suitable for her digestion has been a constant battle, as the hotel shelter’s food is rarely edible for her, Isabel explained.