Living outside in Rochester brings danger, even in the summer. Especially for women.
This transcript from Episode 2 of "City on Fire" contains language that some may find offensive. It also includes language describing a sexual assault. Reader discretion is advised.
Rob Bell, Democrat and Chronicle reporter:
Patricia Ferrin woke up in a gazebo to smoke one June morning. The sun was covered by a thick haze when she peered into the sky from The Vineyard, a homeless encampment in Rochester. The wildfire smoke in Eastern Canada is another effect of the planet's climate crisis. As the earth heats more every year, the fuel for wildfire driHaes out. More cropland turns to dust and air patterns are intensified. It's a new reality.
Patricia Ferrin, unhoused in Rochester:
It was so smoky that it could have killed everybody.
Rob Bell, Democrat and Chronicle reporter:
Ferrin was born with a congenital heart defect that has subdivided her heart into three chambers. The condition is life-threatening, especially in warm weather.
Patricia Ferrin, unhoused in Rochester:
I've had the heart issues since the day I was born. It is a birth defect. The doctors gave me 28 days (to live) after I was born.
Rob Bell, Democrat and Chronicle reporter:
Ferrin is from Arkansas, one of the warmest states in the country based on average temperature. She left the state with her husband in early 2023, but months later, Ferrin is homeless, unable to find housing on her fixed income. She lives at The Vineyard, a homeless encampment on Rochester's west side run by sister Marcia Allen.
Patricia Ferrin, unhoused in Rochester:
We thought that we were going to get help with family and we didn't do it because it was his family that was supposed to help us, but they never did. I've been here at The Vineyard for about three, almost three months now. We live out there in the gazebo. We are trying to find a place for ourselves because there's no cheap places around here, and only one thing that we are trying to find roommates, but the roommates have upstairs and I don't like stairs.
Rob Bell, Democrat and Chronicle reporter:
Is that because of your heart condition?
Patricia Ferrin, unhoused in Rochester:
Yeah. I try to avoid going upstairs.
Rob Bell, Democrat and Chronicle reporter:
How does extreme heat affect your heart condition?
Patricia Ferrin, unhoused in Rochester:
... It is hard for me to breathe.
Rob Bell, Democrat and Chronicle reporter:
This is "City on Fire," the USA TODAY Network podcast on the effect rising temperatures have on public safety. I'm Rob Bell, a reporter for the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle. This is Episode 2: Wildfires.
Wildfires can get out of control — just like the lives of those who are unhoused in Rochester, New York. This vulnerable group can't always escape the heat or the dangers of it. The thought of climate change heating the planet frightens 29-year-old Patricia Ferrin.
Patricia Ferrin, unhoused in Rochester:
I'm very afraid of that. You get the hotness and then having a heart attack, it really, really sucks when you have a lot of problems with you going on. Out there in the world is so tough for a person like me to go through. We got to find shade. We got to find our places to put our heads, and it's very hard and it's very difficult to sleep on the streets. I have fear of everything. Where am I going to get my next meal? When is the next time I'm going to get a shower?
Dr. Harry Murray, professor of sociology at Nazareth University:
You know not listed, I think, in cause of death for homeless folks so much is stress, both physical stress and psychological stress. It's really stressful being homeless, not knowing where you're going to sleep.
Rob Bell, Democrat and Chronicle reporter:
You just heard the voice of Dr. Harry Murray, professor of sociology at Nazareth University. In 2017, Murray studied the life expectancy of homeless people in and out of the Rochester shelter House of Mercy
Dr. Harry Murray, professor of sociology at Nazareth University:
It actually goes back to about 1977 because that's when I started working at Unity Kitchen in Syracuse, and I went to a lot of funerals. They weren't of folks who were dying in their 80s or their 70s. They were lucky if they reached their 60s or their 50s.
A while after I moved to Rochester in 1986, I met Sister Grace and went over to the House of Mercy and at the old House of Mercy on Hudson, her office was covered with obituaries and mostly those pamphlets that you get from funeral homes or at funerals of people, and I started to think, wow, this is a source of data. Men died at an age of around 55 and women died at around 42. The average life expectancy of a woman in Monroe County is like 81 years old, so I mean a homeless woman — it was barely half.
I mean, for homeless men, it was over 20 years younger that they were dying than the average person in Monroe County, but women — it just really struck me.
Rob Bell, Democrat and Chronicle reporter:
Dr. Murray didn't factor heat into his study on life expectancy, but a 2022 National Library of Medicine study found that the risk of heat-related illness may be higher for people experiencing homelessness due to a lack of access to cool places and water and the complex interactions between mental illness, medications and substance abuse.
Dr. Harry Murray, professor of sociology at Nazareth University:
From the beginnings in the 1970s of my working with folks who were homeless, it's that it's just not a matter of not having a roof over your head. It's a matter of not having as many years on this planet that it really is sort of just kind of a death sentence.
Rob Bell, Democrat and Chronicle reporter:
When I visited Patricia Ferrin at The Vineyard, she sat next to John Lee, 66, who's dealt with many bouts of homelessness. He's been at The Vineyard for six months.
John Lee, unhoused in Rochester:
I was living at the Elks Hotel. Before that I was locked up. Before that, I was living in an apartment on Lake Ave.
I've been unhoused a few times over the last 20 or 30 years. Substance abuse issues. Law trouble. Weed, crack, powder cocaine. I have arthritis, had bone cancer, had a few heart conditions, titanium rods in my thigh. I have plates and screws in my lower leg, rods in my right wrist. Bullet in my back.
Rob Bell, Democrat and Chronicle reporter:
The bullet in John's back is from his military service. Here's Dr. Harry Murray.
Dr. Harry Murray, professor of sociology at Nazareth University:
I can't tell you how many folks I've known who are homeless, who are veterans. When I started working with folks who were homeless in the late 1970s, an awful lot, maybe a third of the folks were homeless Vietnam vets.
John Lee, unhoused in Rochester:
Two tours of Vietnam, Bosnia, Afghanistan. My 10-year callback Desert Storm, the first one.
Dr. Harry Murray, professor of sociology at Nazareth University:
That they never were able to get back into, quote, normal life, because often because of the things that they've done or the things that they've seen, that war creates a moral injury that you just can't go to a psychiatrist and all of a sudden it's fixed.
Rob Bell, Democrat and Chronicle reporter:
It was a steamy day when I interviewed Patricia and John. You could hear the air conditioners hum inside the tiny structure adjacent to The Vineyard. You could see the sweat on John's forehead.
John Lee, unhoused in Rochester:
On days like today, I used to use street drugs to take away the pain. When I used to live in the subway tunnels back in the 80s and 90s underneath the library downtown, these kids from Brockport came out there with paint guns and were shooting everybody in the tunnel just because they knew they were homeless and the cops weren't going to pay them no attention. A lot of unhoused people, they panhandle and stuff like that and people would spit on them, throw pop bottles at them, all kinds of stuff.
Rob Bell, Democrat and Chronicle reporter:
Do you see that happen more during the summer?
John Lee, unhoused in Rochester:
Yeah, because more people are out.
Rob Bell, Democrat and Chronicle reporter:
So are you more fearful during those summer months?
John Lee, unhoused in Rochester:
I'm not — because I fight back. I was a black belt by 10 years old.
Rob Bell, Democrat and Chronicle reporter:
Have you ever found yourself in a position where you had to protect yourself or somebody else?
John Lee, unhoused in Rochester:
Absolutely. Several times.
Rob Bell, Democrat and Chronicle reporter:
Can you speak about one of those times?
John Lee, unhoused in Rochester:
No, not without going to prison.
Rob Bell, Democrat and Chronicle reporter:
John is well over six feet in person. He's a huge man that anyone would think twice about attacking. Patricia Ferrin calls John her bodyguard.
Patricia Ferrin, unhoused in Rochester:
I adopted him as my father.
Rob Bell, Democrat and Chronicle reporter:
Nice.
John Lee, unhoused in Rochester:
Those people out here think I'm Superman.
Rob Bell, Democrat and Chronicle reporter:
Patricia and John are good friends. They even have the same birthday.
Rob Bell, Democrat and Chronicle reporter:
While nobody messes with Big John, Patricia knows the hazards of being a woman living outdoors.
Patricia Ferrin, unhoused in Rochester:
A lot of people like to pick up women that are homeless, thinking that I am a prostitute, a sex worker.
John Lee, unhoused in Rochester:
I see a lot of women targeted, and it's a lot of guys, just because they see a homeless lady — press up on 'em. ... And if they don't watch what they're doing, they might get pulled in the alley in a parking lot behind the building. I've seen it, stopped it a few times.
Dr. Harry Murray, professor of sociology at Nazareth University:
Some of the women who died (from) House of Mercy, it was a violent death.
Rob Bell, Democrat and Chronicle reporter:
Rochester's Joseph Avenue is a hotspot for those at the crossroads of homelessness and substance abuse. While walking with outreach worker Gary Harding from the nonprofit Recovery All Ways, I ran into a woman shooting heroin in the middle of a grassy field. The summer months increase her chances of being sexually assaulted. On the streets, she's known as TeeTee.
TeeTee, unhoused in Rochester:
Somebody running up on me, rape me when I'm sleeping. I'm sleeping here by myself. Somebody's just coming and dry humping me or something up, waking me up. Somebody with a d--- inside of me or anything.
Rob Bell, Democrat and Chronicle reporter:
Is that something that happens?
TeeTee, unhoused in Rochester:
It happened. It happened. Yeah. It happened to me three times already. My stuff came up. I had a n---- dry humping me when I woke up, no names, but it was a couple of days ago. I slept. I said I was cold. I put the cover over me. All I felt was a weiner poking me, humping me, and I'm waking up like, what the f--- are you doing on top of me? Get the f--- off me. That's scary.
TeeTee's friend:
Nice weather means more people are coming out. Motherf---ers do not know how to act when you go to parties, they start shooting out and you know what I'm saying, shooting at each other and s--- like that. Dumb s---. Or robbing people when it's nice out. Everything happens when it's nice out, everyone mad. It really is.
Rob Bell, Democrat and Chronicle reporter:
Suddenly in the middle of our conversation, a man approaches the women asking questions about his recently overdosed family. He believes one of the women has something to do with (what happened) and angrily vows to find out the whole story.
TeeTee, unhoused in Rochester:
That was a threat. They don't know who killed their son.
Rob Bell, Democrat and Chronicle reporter:
Was he out here too?
TeeTee, unhoused in Rochester:
I never met him. I only saw him in the window, so I don't know him at all.
Rob Bell, Democrat and Chronicle reporter:
But do you know if he overdosed or not? Is that how he died?
TeeTee, unhoused in Rochester:
They said that he overdosed.
Rob Bell, Democrat and Chronicle reporter:
I asked TeeTee what keeps her on the streets. She said, it's the substance abuse. I then asked her who exposed her to the drugs?
TeeTee, unhoused in Rochester:
My boyfriend, my ex.
At first I went to rehab. I cleaned myself up. But he kept on bagging up in front of me, selling in front of me. So I stole three bricks from him and that made me go in. That made me lose him, lose my kids, lose my house, and my income, everything.
Rob Bell, Democrat and Chronicle reporter:
What made you try it the first time?
TeeTee, unhoused in Rochester:
Curiosity. ... It makes me feel alive again. I'm not stressing as much as when I do it, because when I'm down, when I'm not high, I stress. I cry about me not being high, you know what I'm saying?
Rob Bell, Democrat and Chronicle reporter:
Which stresses you out the most when you're not high?
TeeTee, unhoused in Rochester:
It's my kids. Kids. My kids. I want my kids back. I want my house back. I want to be able to be me again.
Rob Bell, Democrat and Chronicle reporter:
Kids are what keep Justin from spiraling out of control.
Justin, lives in Rochester:
If I didn't have those two, this is not the Justin that would be sitting here. There would probably be a plate glass between us.
Rob Bell, Democrat and Chronicle reporter:
Justin represents a different sector of the unhoused community. People who live in their cars. For safety reasons, he only wants to be identified by his first name.
Justin, lives in Rochester:
It's a recent endeavor. So — normal upbringing, college, work, wife, kids ... addiction. I was an alcoholic. Now that was a symptom of my undiagnosed mental illnesses. I'm autistic. I have bipolar, schizophrenia, dyslexia, mental illness, loss of wife and kids, job, stuff. So I was in an apartment and some things happened, so I lost that.
If I don't have a place to go and be, it drains you. So you have to be driving. So you have to have the AC on because you're dying of heat. The heat is not great. There's no breeze and there's mosquitoes and s---. So you can't just leave the windows open and there's weather and stuff. So I got a net from a friend and cut it and taped it to the windows so I could open the windows. So you either get bit by mosquitoes or sweat. It sucks. I sweat it out. It is what it is, and I've been through some pretty rough times. Protection is important.
Rob Bell, Democrat and Chronicle reporter:
What would you say is the worst part?
Justin, lives in Rochester:
The lack of being able to know where I'm going to park tonight or if I'm going to be safe.
Rob Bell, Democrat and Chronicle reporter:
Safety is Justin's number one priority. One night he was in a dangerous situation looking for a secure parking spot.
Justin, lives in Rochester:
I found a place to park. A homeless gentleman told me I could safely park in an area, gave me the tricks on how to get past the thing. So I'm like, okay, cool, maybe this is safe, maybe not whatever, because I have a vehicle. The person tried to manipulate the situation and get me to bring him somewhere — when he got going at me in the car, which is not a place you want to do that. You don't want to come at me in my vehicle. I know where all the things are. So I pulled over. I was able to get him the f--- out. But it doesn't always work out that well for people.
Rob Bell, Democrat and Chronicle reporter:
Homelessness rates have risen nationally by 6% yearly since 2017, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness. The cost of housing and food are the main factors for the incline. And as homelessness rises, the earth's temperatures rise with it. Here's Patricia Ferrin.
Patricia Ferrin, unhoused in Rochester:
I hope that a lot of homeless people can get the courage up to enough to do what I'm doing — talking about it. What I go through every day is challenging because I have two devices in me now. I do have a little bit of depression. I found the way to get rid of the depression, I'm coloring the Bible.
Rob Bell, Democrat and Chronicle reporter:
When I first met TeeTee on Joseph Avenue, she had a coloring book. She asked Gary Harding if he could bring crayons or colored pencils next time he stopped by with water, snacks and Narcan.
TeeTee, unhoused in Rochester:
But I'm thinking about, I want to go to rehab.
Rob Bell, Democrat and Chronicle reporter:
What stops you?
TeeTee, unhoused in Rochester:
What's stopping me? Nobody's there for me when I go there. That's what's stopping me. The support. Support, yeah. I know I'm supposed to have support from my mom. I know I got the support physically, mentally, from my kids, but I want that real support from my mom. Her coming to visit me. Sometimes her answering the phone when I call. I want that support.
I went to Clifton Springs last week. I woke up in the ICU. All I remember is leaving. They told me I was too high to get into the facility. All I remember is walking out the facility and waking up in the ICU, had burn marks on the bottom of my feet, black and blue marks. I got raped. I asked a white man for a drink walking down the street. He put (something) in my drink. I don't remember nothing else. I was in the hospital ICU for three days. ... I was beaten. Oh my God, I was raped trying to go to rehab.
Rob Bell, Democrat and Chronicle reporter:
The longer Tee Tee stays on the streets, the more she's exposed to drugs laced with fentanyl, a narcotic use to treat severe pain that could cause respiratory distress and death when taken in high doses or combined with other substances. When drugs like heroin and crack are taken with fentanyl, the effect can mask heat, stroke symptoms and reduce awareness so people may not realize they're overheating. It's a quick way to overdose during the hot summer.
TeeTee, unhoused in Rochester:
Yesterday, I smoked and then just dozed off. I'm like, oh yeah, that's fentanyl. I didn't go back. It scares me because ... I can die.
Rob Bell, Democrat and Chronicle reporter:
Have you seen anybody overdose?
TeeTee, unhoused in Rochester:
Yeah. Twice. I even saw somebody dead. ... That was my homeboy. I was upstairs when he died. I didn't even know he died. Somebody came up there like, "I just dragged him outside." What the f---? And I ran outside.
Rob Bell, Democrat and Chronicle reporter:
First Street Foundation, a nonprofit research organization, predicts temperatures in Rochester will continue to rise for at least a century or more due to climate change
This "City on Fire" podcast is part of the USA TODAY Network-Northeast's human-centered climate crisis project called Perilous Course directed by New York State Enterprise Editor William Ramsey. This podcast was produced by me, Rob Bell, a reporter for the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle and USA TODAY Network-Northeast Regional Multimedia Director Sean Oates.
Special thanks to Amy D'Amico, Patricia Ferrin, John Lee, Dr. Harry Murray, Gary Harden, TeeTee and Justin.
The Democrat & Chronicle has been investigating the effects of a rapidly heating planet on people who live in our city. Follow along with "City on Fire" as we report the struggle with summer temperatures caused by climate crisis. This is part of the USA TODAY project Perilous Course. Contact D&C journalist Rob Bell at rlbell@gannett.com to be included in a story if you have been affected by climate crisis or heat or William Ramsey for general climate impact.
This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Rochester unhoused face drugs, rape, violence in summer months
