How a former unhoused New Yorker helps combat food insecurity in his city

Outside Macy's flagship store in Herald Square, a young woman sits on a brown sheet of cardboard, her knees drawn tightly to her chest and her head buried between them. An endless stream of New Yorkers and tourists toting fancy shopping bags pass by without so much as registering her existence.

But when Henry Thomas sees her, he rushes to cross the street, dragging a beat-up gray cooler on wheels behind him.

"Are you hungry?" he asks as he approaches her spot on the sidewalk.

Without saying a word or meeting his eyes, the woman nods quickly and accepts the Wendy's bag Thomas pulls out of his cooler. Inside is a burger, fries, chicken nuggets, a packet of honey mustard and a plastic cup of Sprite.

Thomas tries to talk with her, but the young woman stays quiet, distant. Without judgment, he grabs his cooler by its handle and shoves off through the crowd, his grown son following closely behind.

Thomas starts off each day with a cooler full of food and drinks, walking the city's streets and subway system handing them out until it's empty.

As a formerly unhoused person, Thomas holds the cause near to his heart. "I see myself in their eyes. I was once where they are at and I desperately want to help them," the 47-year-old father of two tells CNN, his eyes darting from corner to corner in search of others who might be hungry.

His Free Food for the Homeless program was inspired by generosity bequeathed upon a friend of his nearly a decade ago and fueled by volunteers and donations from the public. As a formerly unhoused person himself, Thomas can "see myself in their eyes," he says of those in need.

New York City is experiencing its highest level of homelessness since the Great Depression, according to the non-profit group Coalition for the Homeless . In August, more than 350,000 unhoused people slept in shelters, with friends and family, on city streets or subways throughout the five boroughs, the group estimates. Another New York non-profit, City Harvest , says nearly 1.3 million residents are food insecure, including 1 in 4 children, in America's most populous city.

But figures – no matter how startling – don't mean much to Thomas.

"You can't force a feeling out of the statistics," he says. "But if you actually look closely and see just one person in that situation, it will give you more emotions than any number, no matter how big."

"This is a human being," he insists. "Do you understand?"

Standing on the corner of West 33rd Street beside Greeley Square Park, Thomas lifts the lid off his cooler and counts out loud the number of Wendy's meals he has left.

Nine.

Today's haul isn't much, he says. But its impact could be great.

"I'm not giving them food. I'm giving them hope."

A daunting task On the downtown 1 Train, Thomas and his 22-year-old son, Carl, both wear gray shirts that read "Free Food for the Homeless and the Hungry." They stand on either side of the cooler. It's large – the kind that doubles as a table, complete with cup holders – clunky and difficult to maneuver on a packed train. But they don't seem to mind.

"Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, we do apologize for any disturbance. Is there anyone on this train who's hungry?" Thomas bellows from the center of the car.

"We feed the homeless and the hungry on a daily basis. Please help us feed the homeless. We do not ask for much. By donating one penny or more, if you choose, you could help us feed the homeless and hungry.

"And, ladies and gentlemen, we do also accept smiles."

At that, several passengers smile at Thomas, and he beams back.

"Yes, we gladly accept smiles," he repeats as he walks down the aisle gathering donations from three people who hold out dollar bills.

Free Food for the Homeless runs almost entirely on the kindness of strangers who see Thomas on the trains with his cooler. His daily cache – usually ranging from $60 to $100 but sometimes up to $250 – buys food for the next day. He also gets food donations from local grassroots groups, including environmental group raeri, which he says gave him 28,000 pounds of food last year, and Staten Island Therapeutic Gardens, which works for food justice.

On weeks when donations are especially low and Thomas encounters lots of needy New Yorkers, he uses his own money to buy as much wheat bread, roast beef and American cheese as he can, then hands out homemade sandwiches.

Even on days like this, when all he has is 10 Wendy's meals, Thomas loads up his cooler and heads out to find the hungry. At the very least, he says, it lets those people know they haven't been forgotten.

It's a lesson he learned from a close friend and neighbor on Staten Island, Rolando "Divine" Farrow, who once got a sandwich from a stranger when he was unhoused – a circumstance Thomas had been in as a child and a young adult struggling with substance abuse. Farrow in 2013 invited Thomas to help him distribute meals to the homeless, and two years later, Thomas launched Free Food for the Homeless .

So far, they've fed at least 140,000 people – an average of 50 people a day, six days a week, for the past nine years – estimates Thomas, who's supported by his partner and public assistance while he builds the charity.

But with the number of unhoused and hungry people in New York City only growing, the task often feels daunting.

A shortage of affordable housing, lack of access to quality mental health care and difficulty accessing emergency services, including shelters, are driving growth of the city's unhoused population, the Coalition for the Homeless says.

The migrant crisis – with some 200,000 people arriving in the city since spring 2022 – has exacerbated the issue. But even without it, the number of long-term New Yorkers sleeping in shelters increased by more than 19% from March 2022 to April 2024, the Coalition for the Homeless says in its State of the Homeless 2024 report.

Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul, both Democrats, aren't doing enough to alleviate homelessness, the non-profit group asserts. It also accuses them of trying to limit or dismantle core legal protections for vulnerable people, including New York City's decades-old "Right to Shelter" mandate, which legally requires the city to provide temporary, emergency shelter to anyone who requests it.

New York has a variety of programs that help address food insecurity, a spokesperson for Hochul told CNN, pointing to the federally funded Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program that helps nearly 3 million New Yorkers. The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children also helps provide healthy, nutritious food.

Adams did not respond to CNN's requests for comment. But in September, the mayor and his Department of Social Services commissioner announced 2024 was "a record-breaking year for placing formerly homeless New Yorkers into permanent housing."

"New Yorkers most in need are receiving the full support of our city government to move from the streets and shelters to stability; however, our work is far from done," Adams said in a news release . "We remain committed to making sure homeless New Yorkers achieve the dignity they deserve by finding stable and safe housing."

Food insecurity is even more widespread. "It hits particularly hard in the communities of color that have been disproportionately harmed by decades of policy inequities and systemic failures," City Harvest says. Visits to food pantries and soup kitchens are up 75% since 2019, the group reports.

Thomas isn't sure whom to blame. But he knows people are hungry. And that's all that matters.

As the 1 Train reaches its next stop, Thomas grabs his cooler and starts navigating it through a maze of passengers.

"God bless you," a woman sitting by the doors says as he walks by.

"Thank you for what you're doing brother," another rider echoes.

"Thank you, guys. I love you," Thomas responds before hopping off the train car.

From there, Thomas and his son hoist the heavy cooler up a long and steep staircase to street level, where they stop to give Wendy's meals to three people crouched along the sidewalk: one man in black shorts and no shirt is sleeping, and the others hold cardboard signs asking for donations.

"Please help. Homeless and trying to survive," reads one sign written in black marker and held by a woman in a red shirt, her black hair gathered in a ponytail.

Thomas gives a fourth burger bag to a man walking down the street in tattered clothing who wants to know what type of drink Thomas is offering.

"Sprite," Thomas answers.

The man smiles. "That's my favorite one!" he exclaims.

The interaction, which lasts only a moment, fills Thomas with laughter.

Still, though, his cooler isn't empty.

Five meals to go.

'I've been through things, too' As a young boy, Thomas lived with his parents in an abandoned building in Harlem with no electricity or running water, he recalls. He slept on the floor with his two toys, G.I. Joe and He-Man action figures. Not until he was 8 and moved to Midtown Manhattan to live with his aunt did he have a stable home.

Thomas' mother, whom he considered his best friend until she died in 2012, struggled with depression and bipolar disorder and lived most of her adult life unhoused, he says. In her last 15 years, Thomas cared for her in his Staten Island home.

"My mom, she was different. She was a good human being, genuinely good in her heart," he recalls, offering a broad smile he says he got from her. "She went through so much in life, and having that positivity allowed her to deal with tribulations that anyone else couldn't have survived, even if they had all the resources in the world."

But Thomas' mom's mental health impacted him, too, he says. "It definitely was part of why I ended up homeless myself."

Thomas struggled with substance abuse and bounced in and out of prison on drug-related charges through the late 1990s and early 2000s. Then, after someone he knew nearly beat him to death, he looked for a way off the streets, he says. He earned his GED during another stint behind bars for drug possession. When he was released, he started working odd jobs, slowly building a stable life for himself and, by then, his two children.

"I've been through things, too," Thomas says at a crosswalk on the corner of Broadway right as the light signals for pedestrians to stop. Lost in thought, he remains silent until the light turns green again. "I can see how the difficulties of being out here on the streets and living in these conditions can drive a person to consider it."

The "it" is suicide .

Pulling his gray cooler down Broadway, Thomas shares a story about an unhoused man he met last year on a subway platform who was about to jump in front of a train.

Thomas talked with him – and offered him a meal.

"I explained to him that whatever happened to put him in that state of mind, doing that would not make it better," Thomas recalls. "After I gave him food and started to talk to him, I could see his energy shift from negative to positive."

"I played a part in saving his life in a more immediate type of way. The food is saving someone's lifelong term, but for him I was helping him live, right there on the spot."

Still on Broadway, Thomas spots a man leaning into a trash can. He stops, pops the lid off his cooler and hands the guy a Wendy's bag. As he does, another man, dressed neatly in trousers and a button-down shirt, asks Thomas if he's giving out food. He's hungry, he admits.

Thomas hands him a Wendy's bag.

Numbers 5 and 6: Gone.

"If you think you can assume what someone is going through by the way they look, trust me, you can't," he says later, shaking his head. "You have no idea what they are struggling with or what they are trying to survive."

While there isn't reliable data on the mental health of New York City's unhoused population, the majority of unsheltered people appear to have mental illness or other severe health problems, Coalition for the Homeless says. Compared to unhoused families, single adults also have higher rates of serious mental illness, substance abuse disorders and other health issues.

Although food pantries and community kitchens are scattered around the city, someone with a mental illness may not be able to find them. "It sounds easy to Google: Where is the nearest soup kitchen?" Thomas says. "But for someone in a different state of mind, it's not that easy."

It's a crisis within a crisis, Thomas says. One he knows he can't solve.

"That's hard to accept."

"Every day, I have to come to terms with the fact that I can help the people I serve, give them an opportunity to seek help, but maybe I can't save them," he says.

'You have to do good' In front of the fast-fashion retailer H&M at West 34th Street and 6th Avenue, a Kendrick Lamar song blares from someone's speakerphone while Arabic music intones from a nearby food cart. Thomas, with his cooler in tow, carefully maneuvers a stream of slow-moving tourists and the locals speeding through them.

He passes two street vendors with purses and hats splayed on a table in front of them. They're immigrants from Senegal, they tell him, and yes, they're very hungry.

"No pork?" they ask. Thomas shakes his head, and they accept the bags of burgers, nuggets and fries with shy smiles.

The sweltering summer heat sends droplets of sweat down Thomas' forehead as the sun begins its descent behind the city's skyrise-riddled horizon. But he isn't done yet.

Thomas peeks into his cooler: "One more," he mumbles.

He searches dozens of faces on 7th Avenue to find one in need. An exhausted-looking woman lies on a mat near a subway entrance at vaunted, bustling Penn Station. Thomas crosses the street, approaches her, bends down and hands her the last Wendy's bag of the day.

He turns back around and holds up two thumbs.

It's time to head home.

Standing in a cramped subway elevator with his empty cooler, Thomas shares his philosophy on life: "If you're going to be positive, you have to do positive," he says. "If you're going to be good, you have to do good. If you want others to do better, you have to start with yourself."

Thomas aims to register Free Food for the Homeless as a non-profit so he can attract corporate sponsors and apply for grants to fund a team to feed even more people. He also wants to help foster a better understanding of homelessness and food insecurity, which he sees as completely preventable.

Whether the funding comes or not, he'll continue showing up for New Yorkers, especially the most vulnerable. From the day's donations, he now has $60 in his pocket, enough to buy about 12 fast-food meals to feed hungry people he'll surely find tomorrow on the city's streets.

"You can help even if you don't have a lot of resources," Thomas says. "Today, we only had 10 meals from Wendy's, but I can assure you, those 10 meals went a very long way."