Shelter Woes Spread From Crown Heights to Bed Stuy
It’s hard for a neighborhood to pull itself up when the government keeps pushing it down. On the heels of this summer’s shocker that the Department of Homeless Services was planning to move its main intake center from the east side of Manhattan to the Bedford-Atlantic Armory comes news that the Sumner Avenue Armory (now…
It’s hard for a neighborhood to pull itself up when the government keeps pushing it down. On the heels of this summer’s shocker that the Department of Homeless Services was planning to move its main intake center from the east side of Manhattan to the Bedford-Atlantic Armory comes news that the Sumner Avenue Armory (now on what’s called Marcus Garvey Boulevard) is about to get dumped on as well. As per an email we received yesterday, the shelter, which currently houses 200 men, is scheduled to get more than a thousand new bodies sent its way as a result of the Manhattan dislocation and a reshuffling at Bedford-Atlantic. Sounds like a shaft to us. There’s a meeting tonight at 7 p.m. at the St. Christopher-Ottilie Beacon Center (PS 35) 272 MacDonough (between Lewis and Marcus Garvey). For more information you can also call Ms. Blackshear at 347-325-4635, Ms. Robinson at 718-574-8199 or Ms. Cobbs at 347-683-5047.
Important Town Hall Meeting This Thursday [Bed Stuy Blog]
Homeless Intake Center Plan Provokes Broad Opposition [Brownstoner]
Pols Gather to Pan Crown Heights Homeless Plan [Brownstoner]
March, Rally Held Over Crown Heights Homeless Plan [Brownstoner]
Photo from Bed Stuy Banana
MM – as always, you are right on! Please understand, though, that with many people in foreclosure, the homeless population of those who thought it could ‘never happen’ to them, will doubtless only increase. I’ve met homeless with Master’s Degrees. There’s no monolith here.
OT but my son wants to be a jukebox for Halloween on the theory that he’ll get a quarter instead of candy for singing a song. I suggested he might get more for not singing a song, and now he won’t talk to me.
Speaking of Sarah Palin, I just had a great idea for a Halloween costume: Joe the Plumber! Everyone would be talking about you and vying for your approval.
If they do this to Bedford Stuyvesant and Crown Heights they should put on of these shelters also in Murray Hill or UES in the 70s around Madison or Park. This is so wrong!!! We all have to come out tonight… BS and CH are trying to attract hardworking strong families to the area… Just think next year when Bedford Stuyvesant has the house tour like the one this saturday having a strange men roaming the area…
MM- ever the optimist. Poley will have compassion the day Sarah Palin tells the truth about anything.
Poley- you are consistently the most infantile, shallow poster on brownstone. there are others who are sometimes worse but you are just so consistent you raise ignorance to a fine art. I have no idea how you were raised but it would be no surprise to find out “grinch” was your family name.
If you have never had the oh-so-wonderful experience of being desperately poor, or homeless, you could be excused for not understanding how terrible it can be. But there is no excuse for the sheer lack of humanity you exhibit.
Yeah, Polemicst, there’s nothing like the fun of sleeping on the sidewalk in spit and feces and trash, with rats, 4 legged and otherwise, worrying you. I’m sure the lure of all that “free money” is prompting lazy people everywhere to try the high life of living 24/7 in one set of clothes, eating out of trash bins, and relieving yourself wherever. Welcome to New York City.
Again, you continue to demonstrate what little compassion or regard you have for anyone who is not you. I’m glad you won’t be joining the gathering tonight. Putting a face to your unpleasant comments would not be a highlight of my day.
DIB
Won’t make it.
As for why the homeless are here? Easy, it is the free money.
In every case across the country, increasing homeless services has always resulted in a significant increase in homelessness as freeloaders migrate to the new lands of plenty.
It doesn’t really matter too much. These kinds of social programs will soon be coming to an end. We simply can’t afford to pay people to do nothing, not when there is so much work to do and the economy is tanking. When new deal programs start up again full force, these guys will be rounded up and put to work. Then, they’ll decide they don’t like NYC anymore and move to someplace with a climate better suited to freeloading and substance abuse.
Well, this is hardly surprising.
English Kills is right, let’s work to make homelessness disappear, and then we won’t need enormous human warehouses. Yeah, I know easier said than done, and I also know it’s going to get worse in the next few years, not better, as cutbacks will force more and more people into the system, and loss of donations and funding will cause even the best relief agencies to falter.
However, that does not mean it should be, or will be, a migration of responsibility to Bed Stuy and Crown Heights. No one wants to see people huddled against the side of buildings, sleeping on heating vents, or camped in the subways. Share the responsibilities, that is all we want. BS and CH are doing our share, what about other neighborhoods?
I remember the horrible conditions at the hotel Stonergut refers to, it was disgraceful. It was also a prime example of mismanagement of funds and a disregard for the homeless. There are dedicated and wonderful people who have spent their careers in helping the homeless. These people know how and where to best spend money, allocate resources and people, and make the best out of a shameful social system. They are not running things. We’ve got shrinking dollars and growing homelessness. New ideas, new locations, new ways of operating are needed. We need a WPA-like effort to not only shelter and feed people, but get them back on their feet, and back into society. There is a sizable population of homeless people who are just unable to afford to live here, or have lost their homes in fire, through tragedy or landlord foreclosure. These people can be helped for far less than the cost of keeping them in a shelter. There are those who need medical and structured care, and there are those who will never be helped. Just as the homeless are not a monolith, neither should monster shelters in armories in Brooklyn be the monoliths of how we deal with the problem.
We can’t just keep dumping them in BS or CH. And the residents of these communities are not just going to sit back and accept whatever the administration deems convenient. There are buildings in every neighborhood in this vast city that could be turned into manageable sized shelters. Smaller shelters in every neighborhood would help spread the care and allow the communities they are in the opportunity to actually care about the people in those shelters, and perhaps go a long way to see the homeless not as them, but us. Pollyanic, perhaps, but what we’ve got now certainly isn’t working.
I know we in Crown Heights will be supporting our near neighbors on Marcus Garvey. Perhaps this will help teach all of us that we are connected. This is not a Bed Stuy or a Crown Heights problem, it is a problem for all of us.
So, how are folks feeling about giving Mayor Mike a third term?