City Reneging on Homeless Intake Center Promise?

I urge all concerned citizens to come out for this. If you can't, then contact CHRM and other groups for future protests, and to sign petitions. It doesn't matter if you live in Crown Heights or not. This will affect you.

How the city expects homeless men to make their way to central Brooklyn every day, especially in winter or a night like last night, FOR INTAKE, not a bed, is mind boggling. Intake means they are screened, and then sent elsewhere, or stay at this shelter. Are they supposed to take cabs, or the LIRR to the armory? This is also the worst men's shelter in the city, the place of last, last resort, and there are no plans to do anything to change that, except to shuffle around the cots. Since many homeless men have substance abuse problems, as well as mental and physical illness concerns, why put an intake center in a part of the city that has NO HOSPITALS, NO MEDICAL FACILITIES, anywhere near it, unlike near Bellevue, or other Manhattan locations, where over 60% of the homeless are located.

This is not NIMBY. The Crown Heights community already has 5 times more social service facilities than any other part of Brooklyn. There is already a large shelter right across the street from the armory with an additional couple of hundred beds. What community has 2 men's shelters in the same block? We do our share in taking care of those in need, how about spreading that around to places that do not. It is also a fallacy that we are only taking care of those in our community, so we should have the centers here. That has been statistically proven to be untrue.

This move by the city is a slap in the face to a community that is on the rise. It is a slap in the face of the homeless, and dangerous to them as well. Our community is not going to stand here and let the city do this to us, or to the homeless. Gone are the days when we just shrug to the inevitability of the will of the powerful at City Hall. We are going to fight this to our eventual victory.

Posted by: Montrose Morris at June 4, 2009 9:56 AM

I am reprinting my comments from the links below on the condos.

I also expect the usual howling here about the homeless getting swanky free apartments. Somehow, the horror and uncertainty of being homeless, especially for a family, is barely mitigated by this occurence. There is no guarantee of permanence, especially from an agency not known for great successes. The people still have a shaky future, trying to now find good jobs, schools for kids, and a way out of being under the thumb of city agencies, and on their own again. Not to mention whatever horrors and circumstances put them here in the first place. Hardly "fair", or "lucky" for them.

For the record, I'm not even sure where East New York Ave is, although I suspect it's on the ENY/CH border, not a place I would think expensive condos would be likely to sell, anyway. $350K is a lot of money in a community with an average income of about $38K/year. I'm sure the developer would rather have the homeless, as filtered through DHS. More money, guaranteed by the city, not the work of the usual landlord/tenant squabbles that would arise with regular renters. In the past, this has turned into a horror story for the homeless, and a cash cow for some unscrupulous landlords. Anyone remember that hotel that used to be downtown, where the Mark Morris Dance Center is? Let's hope that's not repeated, albeit with marble sinks and fancy appliances.

Now I'm outta here until the afternoon. Hope to join this discussion later.

Posted by: Montrose Morris at June 4, 2009 11:21 AM

Dr. Franklin, he doesn't care. I don't know how many times and how many ways we have to tell the world that Crown Heights is oversaturated for social services. Just last night, CB8's land use committee heard a request from the Peter Young shelter across the street from the Armory asking that their building be approved for a 75-100 bed live-in drug treatment program. in a five block radius from Grant Square we have the Armory shelter, Peter Young, and another live in program on Bergen near Bedford. Expand the radius and more programs emerge. What other community has 3 large social service entities in that small a space? We have 6 times the saturation of social services, 6 times! Any other community would have long ago put their foot down, and we are making our line in the sand now.

Oh, Big Jugs, if you are in the intake center near Bellevue, help can be gotten quickly. THat's far different than being at the Armory, and calling an ambulance to be trucked to Interfaith or somewhere else. Crown Heights has no hospitals at all within its borders. Interfaith in Bed Stuy is the only hospital in Bed Stuy, and is over saturated itself. This is not the place for the city's sole intake center, and it will NOT happen.

Posted by: Montrose Morris at June 5, 2009 10:33 AM