Ramona Phelps, 59 and homeless, says Penn Station personnel have told her that Penn Station (subterranean train hub) is better suited for her than the new $1.6b train hall across the street.

“I was told that it would be better for me to stay over here.” https://www.newsday.com/news/new-york/moynihan-train-hall-1.50122671

The original Penn (demolished in 1963) had two seating rooms (open to the public, not just to ticketed passengers). Here’s one, circa 1910.

Here’s Theda Joy Reid, 80, who says she’d been evicted from her home and now stays at Penn when she can’t find a room to rent.

Of Moynihan: “It’s beautiful and lovely. Couldn’t get better construction, work or design.”

She hasn’t been inside but has heard about it.

She wishes those in charge of Moynihan could give people like her a break.

"It’s cold outside,” she said, two winter hats pulled over her head, “very cold outside.”

“Dear New York. This is for You.”

Ledges overlooking the trains below are too thin to sit on, so waiting passengers squat.

No seats or tables at the Moynihan Starbucks.

Until laws against vagrancy and loitering began to be struck down in the 1970s by the U.S. Supreme Court, the police could more easily clear out and arrest so-called undesirables — homeless people or even those who just looked out of place....

Over the next five decades, both that court, and New York State’s highest court, have chipped away at such laws, and nowadays people can’t legally be shooed away simply for being, or seeming, homeless.

Two of those cases...
• https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/405/156/
• https://casetext.com/case/people-v-bright-15