ROMEOs help former homeless man furnish apartment

Every Saturday, a handful of local men get together for a meal and a discussion about life. They call themselves the ROMEOs - the Real Old Men Eating Out.

The discussion at one meal last year turned to Long Island's homeless, and afterward, the ROMEOs decided to try to find a person in need and offer to help.

On Friday, they delivered. Harold Krainin, 83, brought several housewarming gifts - a bed, a kitchen table and dining chairs, a dresser, and bags of clothing and shoes - to Wallace Burnett, 60, a former homeless man who just moved into his first apartment in Glen Cove.

Employees from Nassau's Economic Opportunity Commission, which connected Krainin and Burnett, carried the furniture up the stairs and helped to set it up.

The two men later sat in the dining chairs and surveyed the apartment.

"It's a blessing," Burnett said. "I didn't know what to say."

Krainin, who despite the group's name, still works at his Manhattan law practice three days a week, collected the money and organized the project.

"One day I suggested to the guys, 'We talk about the world. Maybe we should do something for the community,' " Krainin said.

Over the course of several months after their discussion last year, the ROMEOs each chipped in $2 a week, which Krainin collected in a drawer in his Floral Park home until he had about $500.

He called several agencies to ask for help spending the money. No one responded, until Krainin found Lisa Rodriguez, a community organizer supervisor with the Nassau Economic Opportunity Commission.

"I said I had plenty of people," Rodriguez said Friday.

She thought of Burnett, who lost his job loading textile trucks in Manhattan in September 2006. Since then, Burnett had spent time living in various shelters and on the streets, before moving into a Glen Cove shelter in 2008. He also has polycystic kidney disease and goes for dialysis three times a week.

"He seemed like he wanted something more than just living on the street," Rodriguez said.

After a meeting with Burnett, Krainin and the other ROMEOs collected the furniture and arranged for its delivery to Burnett's new home. They still have some money left over and will consider ways to use it, Krainin said. "We were glad that we could do something for someone," he said.

Burnett said he's still "in a fog" as he cooks and cleans in his own furnished apartment. "There's no worry about the next place to go, how long you're going to be here," he said. "That takes some getting used to."