Thursday, February 04, 2010 NEW YORK: Kariana, aged three, has a lonely existence in the New York homeless shelter her parents moved into last year. Lonely, but not alone -- there are nearly 16,000 children just like her. Homelessness in New York has soared as a result of the damaged US economy and children make up almost half of that growing population. Shivering outside the forbidding gates to a Brooklyn shelter, Kariana's petite mother, Karen Diaz, said she'd been homeless since arriving three months ago from Puerto Rico with her husband Pedro, Kariana, and a second daughter, aged six. "We thought we would be here just for 10 days and get some place better, but time flew by," said Diaz, 24. Guards would not allow a reporter inside the building, a former hospital now named the Auburn Family Shelter. Diaz described a rough life of tasteless food, "disgusting, dirty" communal toilets, bunk beds in their family room, and "scary" fellow r...
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