Why New York is turning luxury hotels into homeless shelters
Lawrence Jones discusses New York City converting luxury hotels into homeless shelters
Upper West Side residents say three hotels that are housing hundreds of homeless men during the coronavirus pandemic have turned the area into a spectacle of public urination, cat-calling and open drug use.
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Among those staying at the luxury Belleclaire on Broadway and the Lucerne on W. 79th Street, and the more down-market Belnord on W. 87th Street, are people who are mentally ill, recovering from drug addictions, and registered sex offenders.
Ten sex offenders are staying in a single hotel — the Belleclaire, which is just one block from the playground of P.S. 87.
“It doesn’t feel safe anymore,” nanny Michele McDowall, 39, told The Post.
She said she was recently offered crack by a pair of homeless men as she wheeled a toddler along Riverside Park at 79th Street.
“You want to buy crack?” she said they shouted repeatedly as she hurried past, and as the frightened 2-year-old girl in the stroller put her hands over her ears and cried, “Too loud!”
The homeless men have been moved from dorm-style shelters around the city so they can be sheltered one or two to a room to better protect them from COVID-19, officials explain.
“In order to defuse that ticking time bomb, we implemented a massive emergency relocation of human beings from those congregate shelters throughout the city, more than 10,000 in about eight weeks,” Department of Homeless Services Commissioner Steven Banks said Thursday.
But neighbors say that now a new bomb is ticking in and around the three hotels. They are three out of 139 hotels being used to house homeless in the city, a source connected to the Hotel Association of New York City told The Post.
Hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent on the relocations, the source said — 75 percent of it paid for by FEMA, and 25 percent by the city — a breakdown confirmed by city officials.
“The contract is short-termed and runs through October but will likely be renewed,” the source said.
DHS is handling the distribution of the funds, but has been less than transparent in informing the neighborhood or releasing details publicly.
“The DHS is a rogue agency,” one local community board member said of the homeless influx, noting that residents were given no input and little or no notice of the move.
The board member, who asked to not be identified by name, said that they were told the city was paying the hotels $175 a day per homeless person or “two guys in a room at $350 a day.”
“You do the math,” the board members said. “It’s a lot of money.”
The board member added, “It feels like the 1970s. Everyone who can move out is moving out.”
Asked about the funding and the number of homeless people being housed, a Department of Homeless Services spokesman said “File a FOIA.”
“The do not give us the information in real time,” a spokesperson for the city Comptroller’s Office said of the city when asked for the same data.
A Facebook group has been formed where residents exchange photos of men peeing, masturbating and laying sprawled and passed out near the hotels.
“Our community is terrified, angry and frightened,” one organizer of the 1,700 member group, Dr. Megan Martin, told The Post.
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