Crown Heights Doesn't Want UES Homeless Center

you can rent an awesome 2 bedroom apt for $2,916. Seems like a load of money.

this includes food im guessing

Posted by: guest at May 7, 2008 10:18 AM

This is the idiocy of the system. I have a friend who works in inpatient psych-$1000/night and the city spent $30,000 housing him at the hospital while they looked for other housing for him. There has to be a better way.

Posted by: guest at May 7, 2008 10:26 AM

For that price. i will set three of them up in my basement apartment and have my wife cook for them. just trying to help out. $$$:)

Posted by: guest at May 7, 2008 10:52 AM

a recreation center at the Crown Heights armory is not feasible, there is no way to lock down the soap in the showers to prevent it from being stolen.

residents would steal the fitness machines while the hipsters were still on them.

gold teeth would set off the metal detectors causing to many false alarms.

it is not feasible.

Posted by: guest at May 7, 2008 11:00 AM

Tish James...the ultimate sellout. If she had her way, we'd be converting all homeless people into a clean-burning fuel.

Posted by: guest at May 7, 2008 11:20 AM

I have to say, this seems like the classic "move an undesirable service from a toney neighborhood to a less toney neighborhood" gambit.

I read somewhere that the top 20 percent of NYC's population makes 40 times as much as the lowest quintile*. In my opinion, the wealthy in this city need as much of a reminder as everyone else that 20 percent of this city live below the legal poverty line.

*don't have the exact reference, but it's cited by Susan Fainstein in Endless Cities, Phaidon Press. Gotta work today, folks, so I'm afraid I can't go digging around for the reference, but feel free if it moves you.

Posted by: guest at May 7, 2008 11:21 AM

Actually, if John Jay High School in PS were turned into a homeless shelter, its new inhabitants would probably be much safer and more mature than the students currently there.

Posted by: guest at May 7, 2008 11:22 AM

No kidding. Those John Jay students are animals.

Posted by: guest at May 7, 2008 11:24 AM

Montrose Morris-

I and a lot of my friends would be down to help in the effort to block this. Can you give out contact info for CHARM?

The mayor's rationale is pure bullshit; Did they quantify how many homeless men would be discouraged from staying in a shelter if they had to cross the bridge, 10, 1000, none?

Posted by: guest at May 7, 2008 12:10 PM

"the goal is to make the intake center more difficult to reach so fewer homeless men would turn to the shelter system"

Staten Island.

Posted by: guest at May 7, 2008 12:31 PM

2,900 a month? thats almost 3 times what I pay for a loft right next door to the Armory.

That's insane!

I don't know if they all come from the shelter but almost every take out restaurant in the neighborhood has a 'courtesy door opener'.

Why not employ them at 30K a year doing something useful. Sounds like they have it better than most of the working class in the city.

Posted by: guest at May 7, 2008 12:35 PM

$2,916 a month, for a bed?! That's nearly 4X what I spend for rent and utilities! The system is failing. Maybe if there was affordable housing available for minimum wage workers, we wouldn't have to support this obvious abuse of funding.

Posted by: guest at May 7, 2008 2:18 PM

"I have a friend who works in inpatient psych-$1000/night and the city spent $30,000 housing him at the hospital while they looked for other housing for him. There has to be a better way."

It would have to be a way that doesn't encourage every other state to send their psyc patients to NYC where they will be more cost-effectively (for the sender) taken care of. That's what's behind this. There is a long, long history here. The major psych hospital in CT used to discharge troubled patients directly onto a trend to Grand Central.

Provide $3,000 a month apartments for every homeless person who shows up rather than $1,000 a night hospitals and next thing you know the hospitals will be full again.

It's what happens when there is a state and local matching cost of these people's services. Everyone has an incentive to dump.

Posted by: guest at May 7, 2008 2:29 PM

"These people will be hanging out on our streets and in parks and subways."

"These people", Montrose? Wow, such kind, sensitive language. Last time I checked, streets, parks, and subways were public property and being homeless did not strip one the right to be in any of these places.

"Some will be preying on the rest of us, and some with mental issues may harm themselves and others."

Preying? You depict these people, who are human beings after all, as animals. You also perpetuate the stereotype of the violent mentally ill. You talk a good game about caring, but this post seems to show your true colors.

It reminds me of Phil Ochs's prelude to his famous song, "Love Me, I'm a Liberal", when he says that liberals tend to agree to left of center during good times, and the right of center if an issue affects them personally.

Posted by: guest at May 7, 2008 3:36 PM

Hello Montrose,

I just read all of the comments and yours was a bit offensive. Public places are public places for a reason, so that people can utilize them. ALL people.

I have a nephew who is staying in the shelter and he suffers from schizophrenia and is NOT dangerous. We are happy that he has found a place who may be able to provide him with some safety, routine and shelter.

We have had deaths in our family and our family has been permeated by mental illness. Are we bad? No. Are we not intelligent? No. Are we not educated? No. The fact is that the family unit is breaking down and has broken down due to divorces, child support that many men can not pay and live on their own, layoffs, competition for work, poor education and expensive education, expensive housing. I think the $2,000 and some money that is spent on each person includes staff, food, security, beds, utilities for the shelter and counseling.

You sure sound like a unevolved person with the remarks you state. Homeless men would rather be in an armory with less beds and they develop their own community and have conistent people they see, staff, security guards and it is not easy for them. They can not roam around all night otherwise they have no where to sleep. Some work during the day and try to get back to get a bed. Some have been afflicted with life crisis, some with mental illness, some with lack of education and skills and some with paying child support and alimony for families that have dissolved.

Not everyone is single and able to use their paycheck for their own personal luxuries. Not everyone has their sanity all the time.

I think you should take a good look at yourself, your response seems very judgmental and unevolved.

Posted by: guest at June 8, 2008 8:35 PM