Crown Heights Doesn't Want UES Homeless Center
Some Crown Heights residents are organizing against the city’s plan to relocate its sole intake center for single homeless men from the Upper East Side to the castle-like armory at Atlantic and Bedford Avenues. The city plans to turn its UES facility into a hotel and conference center, despite 60 percent of the city’s homeless…
Some Crown Heights residents are organizing against the city’s plan to relocate its sole intake center for single homeless men from the Upper East Side to the castle-like armory at Atlantic and Bedford Avenues. The city plans to turn its UES facility into a hotel and conference center, despite 60 percent of the city’s homeless population living in Manhattan versus 16 percent in Brooklyn. We have a source who works closely with the Mayor’s Office on this issue, who said the goal is to make the intake center more difficult to reach so fewer homeless men would turn to the shelter system. Each shelter bed cost $35,000 a year, or $2,916 a month. The city would rather spend that money on more permanent housing programs and hopes some men who typically sleep at shelters for a night or two would instead stay with friends or family, said the source, adding that the city’s most at-risk homeless population tends to avoid shelters.
Rachel Pratt of CHARM (Crown Heights Revitalization Movement), backed by Councilwoman Letitia James, said her community board already has more than its fair share of social service beds—112 beds per 100 acres, compared to neighborhoods like Bensonhurst/ Gravesend and Bay Ridge/ Dyker Heights, which have less than 6 beds per 100 acres. The armory accounts for half of the 1,170 beds in Crown Heights North/ Prospect Height’s, and has one of the worst reputations among in the city. James said she wants a portion of the armory converted into a recreation center like in Park Slope, and doesn’t feel her district should have to accept the increase in homelessness in exchange. See the full comparison data on social service beds in Brooklyn community boards after the jump…
City to Close UES Homeless Shelter, Relocate to Bed-Stuy [Daily News]
Upper East Siders Want Homeless Shelter to Stay [NY Post]
The Future of the Atlantic Armory? [Brownstoner]
History of the Atlantic Armory [Bed-Stuy Banana]
$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.
12:10, you can contact CHARM at crownheightsrm@gmail.com.
Crown Heights North Association (CHNA) website is http://www.crownheightsnorth.org
Thanks for getting involved.
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.
“the goal is to make the intake center more difficult to reach so fewer homeless men would turn to the shelter system”
Staten Island.
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?
No kidding. Those John Jay students are animals.
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.
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.
Tish James…the ultimate sellout. If she had her way, we’d be converting all homeless people into a clean-burning fuel.