Sneaky Shelter

 
Queens Chronicle

During a Cambria Heights Civic Association Zoom meeting last Thursday, many residents aired their concerns about what will become of a defunct area Rite Aid, located at 222-14 Linden Blvd.

Throughout the online forum, several people said they had heard rumors that the new owner of the former pharmacy’s lot intends to transform the space into a transient shelter and worried that could destroy property values and create safety problems.

Under the city Department of Buildings certificate of occupancy, or CofO, Comments section, it was noted that “the facility shall be operated by a philanthropic or non-profit institution, sponsored by [the Department of Homeless Services] ... This certificate shall expire when the ownership operation and use by an institution or public agency ... ceases. The Class B multiple dwelling classification of this building is lodging house.”

DOB’s job filing data says there are no work permits filed, but the zoning information, scope of work and cost affidavit sections have proposals for a transient lodging house, which would include a community facility, a cafeteria and eight dwelling units for 120 beds. If the proposal were to go through, the project is expected to cost $607,170 in property alterations.

Bryan Block, the president of CHCA, said there were about 60 objections to the proposed project as of April 11.

Some of the objections to converting the space include a lack of egress, the parking layout, the elevation of the lot, the noncombustible rooftop hatch and whether the property was in a flood zone, according to DOB.

“The civic was not notified about this and nothing came to the community board,” said Block, “Yes, there was a rumor going around, but there was nothing filed until a couple weeks ago. So, when we said it was a rumor, it was because we didn’t have anything in writing from about three weeks ago. We don’t go on rumors, we go on what we get from the city and we still haven’t gotten anything from the city.”

The lot is zoned R3-2, which in general denotes residential districts that allow a variety of housing types, including low-rise attached houses, small multifamily apartment houses, and detached and semidetached one- and two-family residences. It is the lowest-density zoning district in which multiple dwellings are permitted in Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island and the Bronx, according to the Department of City Planning.

“The site where the building is located is ... zoned residential, but it has a commercial overlay, which allowed the Rite Aid commercial use there,” said Steven Taylor, a CHCA board member. “The point I’m making is, they have the ability to make this for residential use even though we’ve always looked at it as a commercial use.”

The lot is 20,460 square feet, including the 10,000-square-foot commercial building and 30 parking spots. It is a six- to 11-minute drive from five Long Island Rail Road stations, the E,F, J and Z subway stations and the JFK AirTrain. It was put up for sale on Dec. 12, 2023 and sold for $5 million on Feb. 16, according to several real estate websites.

State Sen. Leroy Comrie (D-St. Albans) said seeking an injunction against the DOB to prevent a shelter from being erected in the space could be a possibility.

“I’m going to check with the councilmember if one has not been filed,” Comrie said.

 

Poverty pimping sister act

  

NY Post

Providing shelter is a family affair at the city Department of Homeless Services.

The firm of Homeless Service Administrator Joslyn Carter’s sister has been awarded 17 contracts with the agency valued at a staggering $1.7 billion, according to data compiled by city Comptroller Brad Lander’s office.

Carter’s sister, Valerie Smith, is vice president of New York City Housing programs for Yonkers-based Westhab Inc., which runs homeless shelters in the city.

She has been a top administrator there since 2017.

Seventeen of the social services contracts were awarded by DHS, many in recent years with Smith working at the agency as the city grapples with a record homeless population fueled by a massive influx of migrants from the southern border.

Three others were awarded by the Department of Youth and Community Development and two by the Department of Education, totaling $4.7 million.

Councilman Robert Holden (D-Queens) demanded an investigation by the Department of Investigation and Conflicts of Interest Board after hearing of the unusual sibling relationship involving the city homeless services honcho and a top contractor awarded business with the agency.

Holden griped numerous times about problems at a shelter for 180 single men run by Westhab on Cooper Avenue in Glendale in his district — including complaints of drug use, violence, masturbating in public and menacing neighbors — some of which were exposed in a CBS report last September.

He suspected something was amiss when he said he failed to get an adequate response from Westhab or the city homeless officials.

“The whole thing stinks to high heaven. Why is Westhab getting all this money?,” Holden said Sunday. “It looks like they have someone on the inside. They’re protected.”

“They’re not doing a good job at the shelter on Cooper Avenue. It’s a mess over there.”

In a Feb. 8 letter to DOI and COIB, Holden said, “I recently learned from a credible source that the Department of Homeless Services Administrator Joslyn Carter is the sister of Westhab’s Vice President of New York City Shelter Programs, Valerie Smith. I am concerned that immediate family members can work on the same contract despite a potential conflict of interest.”

He told the investigative and ethics agencies that there have been 1,500 calls to 911 for the shelter and 156 resident arrests.

“As you know, corruption and criminal acts often occur in the social service industry.

There is no sanctuary here

NY Post

Overwhelmed city officials are struggling to provide a promised intake center and hotel rooms to migrants being shipped by the busload from Texas to the Big Apple, The Post has learned.

The Department of Homeless Services acknowledged to The Post that it has abandoned its initial plan to operate an intake and processing center dedicated to the recent arrivals alongside a 600-room shelter at the ROW NYC hotel on Eighth Avenue in Midtown.

Officials would only say Sunday that they have finally selected a finalist to operate the yet-to-open Manhattan facility but would not reveal the contractor’s name or its location.

Contracting documents obtained by The Post show that officials had hoped to have the Midtown shelter and intake up and running as soon as Aug. 15 — now 13 days ago.

DHS also admitted that it has yet to select and rent any of the 5,000 hotel rooms the agency said it is seeking to house migrants across the city.

Instead, officials are continuing to commingle migrants with New Yorkers in the city’s existing shelter system — which now includes 15 “emergency” hotel facilities to also help handle a summer population surge, according to the DSS on Friday.

City Hall has refused to say how much the city is spending on housing migrants in the homeless-system hotels, but a Post analysis found the cost could surpass $300 million.

 

City resorts to hotels and the Podolskys again to shelter the homeless

 City Limits

With the number of families in homeless shelters on the rise, New York City officials have once again turned to a pair of notorious landlords closely aligned with Mayor Eric Adams’ top aide to secure extra bed space.

Brothers Stuart and Jay Podolsky—known for profiting off of poorly-maintained housing, and recent clients of Adams’ Chief of Staff Frank Carone—are leasing at least three of their hotels to the city for use as shelters for homeless families. The sites include the Marcel in Gramercy, which reopened to homeless families earlier this month; the Apollo in Harlem, where staff said families began staying July 2; and the Ellington in Morningside Heights, where work crews began prepping for the return of homeless residents in June after the city moved families out a year earlier.

Despite the Podolskys’ sordid pasts, city officials have long leased hotels and tenement buildings from the brothers for use as temporary homeless shelters. In 2017, the property owners retained Carone, then a partner in the law firm Abrams Fensterman, to represent them in negotiations with the de Blasio administration that led to the sale two years later of 17 buildings housing homeless families in the city’s scandal-scarred “cluster site” program. Under that scheme, the Department of Homeless Services (DHS) placed families on a temporary basis in privately-owned apartments they leased at exorbitant prices. The Podolskys managed to extract $173 million from the city in the portfolio sale—$30 million more than the value assessed by an independent appraiser—after raking in millions from the cluster rentals.

Among advocates for the rights of homeless New Yorkers, the deal was seen as a key step toward finally eliminating the cluster site program that stuck families in miserable—at times fatal—conditions overseen by notoriously neglectful landlords. In the case of the Podolskys, the problems extended beyond neglect: the brothers have been convicted of harassing low-income renters in a campaign of “terror,” prosecutors said, and accused in 2019 of cheating on their taxes while renting apartments to the city.

Still, they managed to cash out with Carone—at the time, attorney for the Brooklyn Democratic Party and a key bundler for then-Mayor Bill de Blasio—at the center of the agreement.

In his first six months as Adams’ gatekeeper, Carone has faced several accusations of influence-peddling and scrutiny of his business ties. But City Hall spokesperson Fabien Levy said Carone had no hand in the latest Podolsky deals and that he sought to avoid conflicts of interest with the Department of Social Services (DSS) when he was appointed to the government post.

“He was not a part of the decision-making process of choosing this site as a shelter,” Levy said. “In fact, months ago, he proactively asked DSS’s general counsel to create a list of matters that he may have worked on or touched on in his capacity as an attorney prior to his joining this administration so that we could properly note and recuse himself from participation in any decision-making or discussion. As such, this matter was never even brought to Frank.”

City Limits submitted a Freedom of Information Law request for the shelter contracts to see how much the Podolskys are getting paid and how many Podolsky hotels are used to house homeless New Yorkers. City-contracted nonprofits rent rooms in at least two others, the Longacre and the ParkView, for homeless adults.

City Hall’s assurances have yet to assuage good government experts, who raised concerns about the latest deal with the Podolskys when contacted by City Limits. Reinvent Albany Executive Director John Kaehny said the agreements illustrate deeper problems with the way social service business gets done in New York City.

“It’s such a rich broth of conflicts of interest with all these powerful people in the city,” Kaehny said. He also criticized the Podolskys’ history of past criminal activity and allegations of tenant harassment.

“The Podolskys are a concern because of more than just their connection with Frank Carone. They seem to be not very good landlords or to be not very good vendors,” Kaehny said. “This far into being a social welfare state, we don’t have better options?”

Glendale homeless shelter devolves into crime pit, as expected

 

QNS

The Cooper Rapid Rehousing Center has been a hot spot for crime in the Glendale area since it opened in 2020, with a staggering 808 911 calls and 71 arrests made. QNS received exclusive data regarding the operations at the shelter after Councilman Robert Holden demanded answers from the mayor’s office on its effectiveness.

There are currently 183 homeless men residing at the Cooper Rapid Rehousing Center at 78-16 Cooper Ave., none of which are from Community Board 5, Holden said. Most of the residents came from other boroughs.

Councilman Robert Holden has been a staunch opponent of the shelter since it was just an idea. Earlier this year, Holden called on the city to investigate the shelter, claiming it was not upholding its contractual obligations to provide basic benefits like employment services and life skills programming. 

“[Department of Homeless Services], the city, the Bill de Blasio administration has broken almost every promise,” Holden said. “They said this would be an employment shelter, and it’s not. It puts a lot of stress on the limited resources of the 104th Precinct.”

Holden has been battling to get data revealing the operations of the shelter, and finally after contacting Mayor Eric Adams himself, was able to get a look into the shelter’s efficiency. 

Of the 183 men living at the Cooper shelter, 52% of them are employed, according to data from the mayor’s office.

According to the city, they estimate about 64% of the unemployed men are able to work. The average stay for a resident is 314 days.

Since 2020, 71 arrests were made, mainly for assault. Most of the over 800 911 calls made were for an ambulance or a call for help.

 

City rules in favor for non-profit's homeless shelter in Ozone Park after long legal battle

 

City Land 

 A not-for-profit proposed to convert two buildings in Ozone Park into homeless services facilities. In July 2016, Common Ground Management Corporation, a not-for-profit organization, applied to the City of New York for approval of a homeless shelter and services project. The non-for-profit organization intended to convert two multistory adjacent buildings in Ozone Park into temporary housing for homeless adults that would provide medical and psychiatric services, meals, laundry, and showers for stays of up to nine months.

Neighbors in the area sued the City of New York to stop the development of the Ozone Park project. The neighbors claimed that the City had unlawfully segmented the environmental review. The neighbors reasoned that the Ozone Park project was part of the City’s 2017 City-wide plan to address homelessness and asserted that the City was required to conduct an environmental review of each project that was part of the 2017 plan.

Queens County Supreme Court Justice Howard G. Lane ruled against the neighbors, finding that the City had not segmented its environmental review. The court found that the City’s 2017 report was a “general agency policy” and the City had not yet identified specific locations to create the homeless shelters. Further, the facilities to be built as part of the City-wide plan would be sponsored by various organizations, built at different times and by different contractors, and would not be dependent on one another.

City to homeless familes: pound sand

  

Photo by JQ LLC

THE CITY

Three in four applications by families seeking homeless shelter got rejected last year — the most since the Department of Homeless Services started disclosing numbers a decade ago.

Families and shelter providers describe an arduous eligibility review process that became even more unnavigable during the pandemic. The state’s public assistance agency is seeing a surge in families appealing their rejections — and a record number of cases reversing DHS decisions, ordering the city to provide families with shelter or reevaluate applications.

“The city has made it virtually impossible to get into a family shelter,” said Craig Hughes, a senior social worker at the Urban Justice Center’s Safety Net Project.

It took seven attempts for Ms. D and her family to get approved for shelter, which only happened after a lawyer got involved, she told THE CITY.

Ms. D, her fiancé and their 1-year-old daughter had their application repeatedly rejected starting in July because DHS investigators concluded that the family still had housing options available and could return to their previous residence — the home of her soon-to-be mother-in-law, who had already demanded they leave.

“We told them numerous times that the person don’t want us here. The person kicked us out and there were threats involved,” said Ms. D, 27, who asked to remain anonymous. “And they still denied us.”

Like thousands of other families from all five boroughs, the Manhattan couple and their daughter made their way to the Department of Homeless Services’ Prevention Assistance and Temporary Housing (PATH) intake center on 151st Street in The Bronx, where families obtain an emergency placement while their applications are investigated.

From a pool averaging about 2,000 applications a month from families seeking shelter in 2021, just 24% were accepted, according to DHS figures.

After years of hovering between 40% and 50%, the share of applications accepted began to decline during the pandemic, with 34% admitted in an average month during 2020, down from 40% two years ago.

Community board slams shelter apartment building

 

 Queens Chronicle

A proposal to build 90 temporary apartment-style units for homeless families in Flushing was met with universal opposition Monday night during a remote meeting of Community Board 7.

But Asian Americans for Equality, which wants to build the structure at 39-03 College Point Blvd., told the Chronicle that the plan is far different from so-called “day shelters” and it is not really a shelter at all.

City officials in an email also disputed accusations that the project was approved without community notice in general and notification of CB 7 in particular.

AAFE on its website says the units are for families experiencing short-term hardships, such as those who may have just lost their homes and those who may have been living in illegal apartments.

Jennifer Sun, co-executive director of the agency, said they hope to break ground in the spring and begin operating in 2024.

Not if those in Monday’s virtual meeting have anything to say about it. Board Chairman Gene Kelty was particularly critical of the lame-duck city officials and the Department of Homeless Services.

“The problem is the city says they don’t need our approval,” said Board Chairman Gene Kelty. “They’re just coming in. They’re calling it transitional family housing and not a shelter for men or women ... And how do they do it? In December at the end of the year when everyone is leaving office.”

Kenneth Chu said volunteers collected more than 20,000 petition signatures in opposition to the plan last weekend.

They also are being backed by Tom Grech, president and CEO of the Queens Chamber of Commerce, who spoke briefly.

“We’re opposed to a shelter in this location,” Grech said. “No responsible person would deny the need for safe shelters for families. This location does not make any sense. Flushing is undergoing a renaissance. We all need to work to find a better use for that property.”

Sun told the Chronicle that the agency has been active for more than 50 years, including two decades in Flushing.

“The city is calling this a shelter, but it’s not a shelter, not like day shelters you see,” she said, adding that services on-site are aimed at getting residents into permanent housing quickly.

Steven Banks weasels out of the DHS

 

NY Post

The embattled head of the city’s sprawling network of social and homeless services, Steve Banks, has ended his pursuit of a position in Mayor-elect Eric Adams’ administration and will depart at the end of the year, he announced Monday.

The longtime lawyer’s decision to leave municipal service and return to the courtroom comes after a slew of newspaper investigations and city reviews exposed significant shortcomings and wrongdoing at key nonprofit shelter providers.

“Steve Banks is a skilled and accomplished public servant, who has navigated complex government problems to find essential solutions on behalf of New Yorkers,” Adams said in a statement. “I wish him well in his new endeavor.”

Might as well leave this here too.

NY Post

At least a dozen homeless people — each a “different shade of crazy” — have colonized the historic Manhattan Bridge colonnade, terrifying residents and besmirching the century-old neoclassical structure with shanties, tarps and tents.

Nearby businesses and residents told The Post their new neighbors are not only a blight near the 111-year-old span once hailed as the gateway to the Big Apple — they’re dangerous too, throwing things when jostled, stealing, and even pooping al fresco.

“Every day’s a problem,” said Zhong Yi Wang, 53, who manages his family’s restaurant, Jisu on Canal Street, where he said three bamboo plants — which cost $800 a pop — recently disappeared.

Bridge denizens often urinate on his door, bang on his window, and even barge inside to scream at him, he said.

Urine isn’t the worst of it, according to a woman who works at the nearby Mahayana Temple.

“Somebody pooped in front of the temple,” said the woman, who only have her first name, Cindy. “And when we talk to them, they just will throw things on you and do all kinds of strange things.”

“It’s not so safe,” she continued outside the Buddhist house of worship. “They will try to punch you or kick you, you have to run away.”

Even other homeless people avoid the area now.

Blaz uses whole neighborhood as a congregate homeless shelter.

 

CBS New York 

 

Douglaston shelter suspended for now

  

Queens Chronicle

The Douglaston Civic Association secured a temporary restraining order against the city last week in an effort to stop a planned homeless shelter from opening in the neighborhood.

The building at 243-02 Northern Blvd., the former Pride of Judea, is in the process of being converted to house 75 single women over the age of 49. The civic group has long complained that the plans do not outline acceptable living conditions.

“That’s completely overcrowding,” civic President Sean Walsh told the Chronicle. “That’s less room than they’d have in a jail site. If you’re trying to help the homeless, this isn’t the way to do it.”

The TRO was filed Oct. 14 and will prevent the city, Department of Homeless Services and the developers from progressing on the project, which was set to open before the end of 2021.

The Douglaston Civic has advocated against the shelter since it was announced in December 2020, but not, it says, because it is wary of homeless individuals living in its neighborhood. Walsh wants to be clear that the group is concerned with the conditions of the dormitory-stye “barracks” and lack of bathrooms planned, but would welcome the women if they were given appropriate living quarters.

“If they want to build a permanent residence for women who are down on their luck, they can build small apartments at this site. We’d have no objection to that,” said Walsh, saying those wouldn’t accommodate as many individuals but would provide each with appropriate space.

The civic has another issue with the former Pride of Judea site: The building would not conform to city zoning laws. Walsh said the building, which previously served as a mental health clinic with offices, would need a variance to be used for housing.

“Whatever they want to put there has to conform to laws. The building as they proposed does not,” Walsh said.

The DHS told the Chronicle that the allegations against the shelter are inaccurate. A spokesperson asserted that it will fall in line with all health and safety codes.

“The health and safety of the New Yorkers who we serve is our number one priority. Whenever [Department of Social Services] approves a proposal for shelter, we expect a finished product that is ready for occupancy and complies with relevant laws, rules, and regulations, including City safety requirements,” the spokesperson said in an email, adding that the agency is confident the courts will agree and recognize that the shelter is a necessary resource for the neighborhood.

4motherf-ck-n000,000,000

 

NY Post

More than $4 billion has flowed from City Hall to scandal-tarred shelter operators over the last eight years, accounting for more than a quarter of the money spent by the Big Apple to tackle its homelessness crisis, an examination of city records reveals.

The $4.6 billion in contract identified by the Post account for 29 percent of the $15.8 billion in contracts let by the Department of Homeless Services over Mayor Bill de Blasio’s nearly eight years in office.

The money has gone out to more than half a dozen shelter operators — including the embattled CORE Services Group — which have each been accused of issues ranging from failing to deliver on multi-million dollar contracts to executive profiteering.

Recent newspaper exposés revealed, for instance, that CORE’s CEO Jack Brown established for-profit vendors that paid him handsomely thanks to millions in taxpayer funds from CORE, which also employed several of his friends and relatives. 

 “The idea that public dollars are going to fund lavish lifestyles of nonprofit executives and their families, instead of helping the neediest, should outrage every New Yorker,” said an outraged Councilman Stephen Levin (D-Brooklyn), who chairs the Council committee who oversees the DHS, when told of The Post’s findings.

“That money should be going to get families and children out of shelters and into apartments,” he added. “A child should not be spending a year and a half of their life living in a hotel room.”

For years, homeless activists and social service providers have argued that City Hall underfunded contracts to operate the Big Apple’s shelter system — and, compounding the problem, often failed to pay them on schedule.

That meant well-established organizations often refused to bid on the work, opening the door to less reputable providers.

“The amount of money identified and the amount of scandal suggests there are major, major problems with these contracts,” said John Kaehny, the head of government watchdog group Reinvent Albany, who called on the feds to get involved.

“Only federal investigators have the money and the resources to get to the bottom of this massive systemic failure,” he added. 

 Stephen Levin is outraged about all this, yet he was the one who was appointed to make sure that these "non"-profit provider executives would be grossly profiting off the homeless crisis which has exacerbated under his watch in the last 8 years. The Blaz couldn't find a better sycophantic feckless enabler.

 

 

How The Other Half Lives 2021

  

NY Daily News

 This is how New York City thanks them for their service.

Cramped cubicles, a leaky ceiling, and a community bathroom. That’s not what homeless veterans — who were promised sanitary, private accommodations to keep COVID at bay — were expecting when they moved into their new city shelter on Wednesday.

“It’s more or less like a prison,” veteran Raheem Allah, 69, told the Daily News. “Really, we’ve been shafted.”

On Tuesday, the city began moving Allah and other homeless vets out of hotels — where they were placed at the beginning of the pandemic — and into the Borden Avenue Veterans Residence, a men’s shelter in Long Island City, Queens, tucked behind a cooking oil warehouse and the Pulaski Bridge.

Allah, who was transferred out of a Howard Johnson’s hotel in Dutch Kills, Queens was among those promised a private room at the new shelter. With multiple heart problems and severe asthma, he’s at a high risk of hospitalization and death if he contracts COVID-19.

But the army vet told The News that his room looks like a public bathroom stall, with partitions that don’t touch the ceilings and allow for free airflow between sleeping areas. A tarp keeps water from dripping onto his head and electrical outlets in the cubicles don’t work, Allah said. He’s been charging his phone at a nearby subway station.

de Blasio's DHS shuttled homeless people from hotels to shelters despite advisory from de Blasio's health department about resurgent pandemic

 

City Limits 

Back in May, as New York was on the precipice of reopening after more than a year of COVID-19 restrictions, the city submitted plans to the state’s Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance (OTDA) seeking permission to begin transferring around 9,000 homeless adults from hotel rooms back to the group shelters the city had used before the pandemic.

The rooms, rented by the city at the start of the crisis at some 60 hotels across the boroughs, were intended to help curb the spread of the virus by providing shelter residents with access to more private space instead of the often crowded, dormitory-style sites that make up the shelter system.

The effort worked—just 0.4 percent of the city’s total COVID-19 cases have been among New Yorkers experiencing homelessness, officials say—but their use was always intended to be temporary, Mayor Bill de Blasio repeatedly stressed.

In seeking the state’s permission to cease using the hotel sites, the city’s Department of Social Services (DSS) and Department of Homeless Services (DHS) submitted detailed plans to the state on how it would do so in order to minimize COVID risks, including meeting a series of specific criteria laid out by the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH).

But a month later, then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo lifted the state’s COVID-19 restrictions and social distancing guidelines in light of increasing vaccination rates, meaning the city no longer needed state permission to move forward on the hotel phase-outs. Those earlier required plans, a spokesperson for the former governor told City Limits at the time, were “moot.”

In the months since, the city has pushed forward on the controversial hotel transfers, despite legal challenges that temporarily halted the practice this summer. And the moves have been carried out without needing to meet the requirements the city set for itself in those May plans sent to the OTDA, since it was no longer required by the state to do so.

But those earlier draft plans, obtained through a Freedom of Information Law request by advocates from the Urban Justice Center’s Safety Net Project and shared with City Limits, offer a look at the city Health Department’s initial recommendations for the moves, at odds with how the actual transfers have been carried out since.

The letter city agencies sent to OTDA on May 18 includes a list of Health Department “shelter reopening metrics,” and recommends that shelter populations should “remain in hotels until the criteria laid out in this document are met.” The criteria included, among other things, that the 7-day average hospital admission threshold for COVID-like illnesses remain below 50 cases per day, and that the city sees “no unforeseen changes in the COVID-19 disease landscape” such as “a major increase in COVID-19 variants of concern.”

The Health Department also recommended that the hotel-to-shelter relocations should be “discontinued (if not yet complete) or there should be a return to the use of hotels” if those factors are no longer met. The city’s average COVID-19 hospitalization admissions began to surpass that 50-case threshold beginning in July; it was 54 on Thursday, city data shows. Meanwhile, the highly contagious Delta variant now accounts for 98 percent of positive city COVID tests over the last four weeks, what advocates argue constitutes a major change in the city’s “COVID-19 landscape” that the DOHMH warned about in its draft recommendations.

DHS ceases using neighboring hotels for sheltering homeless families

 

Redding St. 2017, JQ LLC

 

Queens Chronicle 

The city will be phasing out the use of two Ozone Park hotels to shelter homeless families in the fall, according to the city Department of Homeless Services.

Travelodge by Wyndham Ozone Park located at 137-30 Redding St. is slated to close Sept. 30, and the Ozone Inn & Suites at 137-08 Redding St. will close on Nov. 30.

The DHS will work with approximately 23 households residing at these locations over the coming weeks to connect some to permanent housing and others to alternative shelter placements.

The agency’s use of the two Ozone Park locations goes back to late 2016. They are not Covid-period commercial hotels, which the agency used throughout the pandemic to provide social distancing for its clients, and also began dismantling in July.

The agency maintains that the effort to transition from its use of hotels for homeless shelters is part of a longer-term process of phasing out the stop-gap use of commercial hotels that goes back to previous administrations.

“No one will be displaced and turned out onto the street. This is normal course-of-business work that is part of the plans/commitments we laid out in the Mayor’s Turning the Tide plan several years ago,” wrote a Department of Social Services spokesperson in an email response to questions from the Chronicle.

These hotels have been used as shelters for nearly a half a decade, so why do this now with the Delta Variant spreading?

Just a typical day outside the Glendale shelter

We just gotta keep Steve Banks on payroll!

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A post shared by Council Member Robert Holden (@bobholdennyc)

Delusional Adams wants to keep Steve Banks

Let's see the results of Steve Banks' DHS leadership. Taken outside the "Cooper Rapid Rehousing Center" in Glendale. Last year, DHS told us, "The shelter will serve 200 single men experiencing homelessness who are currently employed or actively seeking employment."

Do these guys look employable?

Great job, Steve!

Meanwhile, Patch is busy looking for "experts" to call Douglaston residents "NIMBY" for not wanting a shelter in their neighborhood. Gee, I can't imagine why they'd be opposed.

Homeless man gets murdered on the street a month after criticizing and avoiding city shelters for their lack of safety

 

Queens Eagle

It’s become a weekly event for Lukasz Ruszczyk: Sanitation workers visit him on the sidewalk beneath the train tracks that mark the Ridgewood-Glendale border. A Department of Homeless Services employee encourages Ruszczyk to move into a city homeless shelter and looks on as the Sanitation crew tosses his stuff into a garbage truck.

Ruszczyk declines the recommendation to leave, and the laborers come back a few days later. They have visited three times in March, according to notices left by outreach workers informing Ruszczyk of the pending sweeps.

Ruszczyk, 38, says they can keep coming. He has no intention of leaving unless it means securing a permanent and private home. 

“I went to a shelter. I was robbed several times,” he told the Eagle Tuesday, minutes after the latest sweep. “I’d rather freeze than go back.” 

Queens Post

Lukasz Ruszczyk, who was living on the streets of Ridgewood, succumbed to his injuries at Wyckoff Heights Medical Center nearly five days after he was assaulted by another homeless man, police said.

Ruszczyk was found intoxicated and beaten, laying on the sidewalk by a bus stop at Forest Avenue and Putnam Avenue on Friday, April 30 at 3 a.m. A witness called 911 and an ambulance rushed him to Wyckoff Heights, police said.

Doctors discovered that Ruszczyk had bruising about his torso and had suffered a severe brain injury — signs of an apparent assault. Hospital officials called officers from the 104th Precinct to investigate.

Police later learned that a woman had called 911 just before 6 p.m. on Thursday to report a group of homeless men fighting at the same location where Ruszczyk was found hours later.

Officers arrested 35-year-old Piotr Wilk, who is also homeless, on murder charges.

And now a word from the original Crapper:

So this Ridgewood homeless guy refused to go to a shelter because they are too dangerous yet the RTU calls people racist for opposing these same shelters and fought for him to remain on the street where he was killed. You can't make this up.

What's your opinion? We like to know-JQ LLC (channeling the old WPIX editorial guy)

Hotel-shelter turned murder scene

From the NY Post:

A 33-year-old man who lived at a Queens homeless shelter was allegedly stabbed to death by a fellow resident of the facility — which neighbors ripped as a beacon for crime that is now spiraling out of control.

A 28-year-old woman who lived nearby her whole life and declined to give her name, said the shelter has brought its share of problems to the neighborhood.

“Shelter’s been here about 3 years,” she said. “Last year or so, cars started getting broken into. Out of control now, every night! My son can’t go in the park. Not even in daytime! Look! Like a prison yard. … Walking around drinking out [of] brown bags! All day, every day! It wasn’t like this back when it was the airport hotel. Never like this.”

“Anything not nailed down disappears,” said a 64-year-old neighbor who identified himself as Mike L. “Steal right out of the front yard. Junkies! I yelled at a guy a couple days ago, like 10 in the morning going through my garbage, on the side of the house. Day is worse than night. Now they’re killing each other — and we’re next.”

“This ain’t getting better,” he added.

Wow! So are Steve Banks and most of the lefty media going to call these people racist for opposing the shelter in their neighborhood? Or are we going to admit that some neighborhoods have valid reasons for not wanting violent criminals living near them?

City throwing $$$ at Trump cronies through homeless shelter non-profits

From Patch:

The 75-bed shelter at 243-02 Northern Blvd. will be run by the nonprofit Samaritan Village. It is slated to open in late 2021.

It would be the first homeless shelter in the Northeast Queens district overseen by Community Board 11, according to the NYC Department of Social Services, the umbrella agency for the Department of Homeless Services.

Oh? Well, Samaritan Village has a stellar reputation! (J/K. We know all about them.)

Hey, has anyone looked into who owns this building now? Let's take a look.

Hmmm...that address...that phone number...those initials... Why, this is LLC is part of the Bayrock Group! And we all know who Bayrock was deeply involved with, yes?

But that's not all! They also own a shelter in Hollis AND the controversial Manhattan shelter. We could keep going (and we will later)...but suffice it to say that they have entered the homeless shelter business head on. Years ago they were eyeballs deep in a development nightmare in Whitestone which got foreclosed on during the financial crisis.

So we're taking Trump's name off buildings and canceling his contracts with the city with righteous indignation while simultaneously enriching his checkered-past pals via multi million dollar social service contracts? Sounds very de Blasio-esque!

Does ANYONE in the media or government look into this shit or are they too busy navel gazing on Twitter and reflexively painting the people who question these things as bigots?