Home Scandal and Gossip ‘You’re too smelly’ Sonia Gonzalez homeless hoarder possessions thrown out

‘You’re too smelly’ Sonia Gonzalez homeless hoarder possessions thrown out

Christopher Koulouris: About author bio at bottom of article.
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Sonia Gonzales homeless hoarder
How one NYC homeless woman's dilemma came to represent an entire nation's dilemma. Screen shot via nbc.
Sonia Gonzales homeless hoarder
How one NYC homeless woman’s dilemma came to represent an entire nation’s dilemma. Screen shot via nbc.

How Sonia Gonzalez homeless hoarder dilemma came to represent the failure of the American dream and society’s reluctance to legitimately address what aisles it.

It seems being a homeless hoarder with too few options in which to rebuild one’s life (as I can once personally attest to ) has come to strike yet another New Yorker. In fact 60 000 homeless New Yorkers, including Sonia Gonzalez.

Making tabloid headlines Wednesday morning was the pitiful expose courtesy of the nypost who couldn’t stop moaning about the Hell’s Kitchen hoarder Sonia Gonzalez, 60, who dared blocked the sidewalks with her travesty mountain of possessions.

While collecting possessions is generally not frowned upon (we do live in a capitalistic environment thank you), collecting such items when you have nowhere to put them except on the street, shopping carts, ripped plastic bags can safely to be assumed never be tolerated too long.

One must be fair and pay respect to the detriment of passerby’s eyesight (as the post explains) the unpleasant eyesores such manifestations and intrusions can cause along with the general icky feeling of reminding most of us that we really don’t live in a free healthy functioning society.

All concerns that barely scraped Sonia Gonzalez’s state of consciousness as she come Wednesday afternoon was forced to brace herself for a new low indignity (yes being homeless, bereft of money, class, as I have over my writing career come to find out) as her life possessions were mercilessly now to be thrown out. 

‘Yes Sonia, enough is enough and really, it’s your smelly silly fault for being homeless in the first place. ‘

Shocked? Don’t be. Let some well intentioned ny post reporters explain things for you:

Cops and city officials swooped in on the Hell’s Kitchen hoarder and threw away her massive, block-long train of trash on Wednesday.

Sonia Gonzalez, 60, could do nothing but watch as authorities sifted through her epic collection of carts and laundry bins throughout the evening, eventually tossing them into a garbage truck parked at the corner of 44th Street and 10th Avenue.

An awaiting garbage truck? How kind of NYC to come to Sonia Gonzalez’s aid.

Then again perhaps she deserved all she got?

Contemplated City Hall spokesperson Karen Hinton via the nypost: ‘Outreach teams have been working to build trust with this client and help bring her to shelter for years,’

‘She has been known to the city since 2009 and has for several years refused to engage with the outreach team and will tell them to leave her alone.’

Let’s back up a second kids. Do you trust the shelter system? Do you trust a system that continues to marginalize the disenfranchised, minorities, the poor, the immobile? Do you trust a system that seeks to put band aids on society’s wounds as opposed to really addressing why there are so many working poor, disillusioned and barely able to keep up Americans with their rent amongst their ranks? Or is that something well to do interns at the nypost have never really had to ever reckon with?

Notes the nypost after the goon squad came and went (how by the way did they know to be there at the exact moment Sonia Gonzales’ life possessions were about to be thrown away????):

When they were done, the epic stash — which included 20 grocery carts, 14 laundry carts, eight suitcases, two large crates and one dolly — was almost entirely gone. All she had left was a duffel bag and a small black trash bag and three laundry carts.

While Gonzales’ possession had to go (‘obstructing traffic, sidewalk, city decorum,etc’) the woman herself still remains at large, adamant that she will not enter NYC’s housing shelter merry go round.

Reflected Human Resources Administration Commissioner Steve Banks after calling Sonia Gonzalez’s plight ‘a very troubling situation’:

‘We’re working with this woman to provide her the type of encouragement to come in off the streets again.’

Concerns which on the surface sound fine and even applaudable but mask the real dilemma which the nypost won’t take the time to explain to you:

America has become a society for the haves and the mostly have nots, with most of us left to fend dearly for our lives, with our jobs exported abroad, with any social benefits once again on the chopping block, with our average income the last 40 years nodding down, our society, economic framework gamed for the benefit of few, while our oligarchy masters (sorry Rupert that does include you too) continue to corner the market and change the goal posts, get fat rich and have the audacity to stoically report on our collective disintegration, including that of one homeless NYC woman, Sonia Gonzalez somewhere roaming tonight in the back alleys of your thoughts….

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