Children are not the face of New York’s homeless. They rarely figure among the panhandlers, bag ladies, war vets, and untreated schizophrenics who have long been stock characters in this city of contrasts. They spend their days in school, their nights in the shelter. If they are seen at all, it is only in glimpses—pulling an overstuffed suitcase in the shadow of a tired parent, passing for a tourist rather than a local without a home.
