Two Massive Homeless Shelters Opening in South Slope--Meeting on 5/1
The city struck a deal to turn the two massive new construction buildings at 535 4th Avenue and 555 4th Avenue (from 14th Street to 16th Street) into two massive homeless shelters.
Combined this will be one of the largest homeless shelters in the city, stretching nearly two full blocks, 12 stories high with 282 units (nearly 1,000 people). Details on community impact–to schools, subways, safety, plans to redevelop 4th Avenue and encourage retail, etc.–have been withheld (or not considered).
There is a meeting on Wednesday, May 1st 6:30-8:30 at John Jay High School (237 7th Avenue).
Some elected officials appear to be pushing this through (and kept the plans quiet until now) (see below: sponsoring organization spends more than $1 million per year on lobbying). They need to hear from us.
Brad Lander: 718-499-1090
Joanne Simon: 718-246-4889
Nydia Velazquez: 718-222-5819
The developers–who have been plagued with stacks of violations on both buildings, including multiple injured workers, a partial collapse and months of stop work orders–are Adam America and Slate Property Group. The group pushing the shelter (Women in Need) is run by Christine Quinn (former council speaker who now earns $350,000 per year as CEO of the group).
Women in Need spends more than $1 million per year on lobbying.
https://bklyner.com/learn-about-two-homeless-shelters-coming-to-4th-avenue-at-may-1st-meeting/
ryansbackyard
in General Discussion 6 years and 4 months ago
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SoSlope | 6 years and 3 months ago
@chemosphere: This entire shelter (both buildings) will be zoned for PS 124, which is not the type of only-wealthy school you are imagining. 51% of the school qualified for free or discounted lunches in the latest stats I have. Compare that to 321 where only 7% qualified for free or discounted lunches. In other words, this shelter may actually increase income segregation by concentrating poor students in a single school.
It is important that we keep objective facts in these difficult conversations. Now, if they located these shelters in the PS321 zone, I might agree with you.
SoSlope | 6 years and 3 months ago
Reminder: This meeting is TONIGHT.
chemosphere | 6 years and 3 months ago
so…you’re saying the kids cheating the zoned schools are *poorer* than the neighborhood kids?
look, all I’m saying is Park Slope is an increasingly wealthy and increasingly segregated neighborhood. If you opt not to build homeless shelters there, homeless families will live somewhere else, and there will be fewer and fewer people in Park Slope of very limited means.
yudashasom | 6 years and 3 months ago
There’s already enough kids/parents cheating the zoned schools in these neighborhoods.
And the kids that are heirs to massive fortunes aren’t slumming it at public schools.
chemosphere | 6 years and 3 months ago
cuz it will get some kids in the zoned schools who aren’t the heirs to massive fortunes.
yudashasom | 6 years and 3 months ago
What do you mean counteract the outrageously high prices??
chemosphere | 6 years and 3 months ago
They’re building two next to each other because the rest of the neighborhood is landmarked to oblivion. They’re not going to spread out 250 units through the north slope and put little buildings on President and Montgomery and Garfield. This is the only place you can build.
Maybe it will help counteract the outrageously high prices of the rest of Park Slope.
SoSlope | 6 years and 3 months ago
Now I am being told (directly by a staff member in a pol’s office) that only 70% of these shelters will be for families. Presumably the rest will be single adults. That is a big switch.
SoSlope | 6 years and 4 months ago
@cate: Is that guaranteed or can it change later on? And, taking the real estate angle: what is the financial deal between the city and the developers (Adam American and Slate)? It sounds like these developers have been pretty bad actors, so even if the shelter is a good idea, I wonder about rewarding them with a lucrative contract.
cate | 6 years and 4 months ago
Not an argument for or against these shelters, but just as a point of information, one of the pols says these two shelters are specifically for families with children only, 40 percent of the clients are working, and they will contain some permanent housing.
yudashasom | 6 years and 4 months ago
I’m not talking about families that are down on their luck, but I get your point.
Lurker | 6 years and 4 months ago
no-permitz, of the 60,000 people in shelters in NY, 23,000 of them are children, and nearly 16,000 families are represented (and those numbers are only part of the picture). There are certainly lots of prominent homeless with the issues you describe, but the lessunderstood issue of homelessness in the city is that kids and families represent a good chunk, and they are not junkies making bad decisions. And affordable housing is the leading cause of homelessness, not being unemployed or a substance abuser. https://www.coalitionforthehomeless.org/basic-facts-about-homelessness-new-york-city/
glarph | 6 years and 4 months ago
Defining terms and understanding the process is important here as well. When a family or individual presents themselves to City authorities as homeless, the City is mandated to get them indoors and sheltered within a strict timeframe, think in terms of hours, not days. That’s where emergency/temporary shelters come in. Once the citizens are safely indoors, they are moved to tier 2 shelter as quickly as possible. Again, think days to a week or two, not months. These are the kind of housing units where stays last 12-24 months and in the best circumstances include the kind of supportive services that help people succeed in the lives-be it GED services, job training, stable child care, dedicated mental health services. Once the family or individual is supported and stabilized they can move on to permanent housing and self sufficiency. When people’s lives are upended by the loss of housing it takes an enormous amount of individual and community good will and effort to right it, I think that temporary shelter is an important first step and should be embraced by community members who have been graced with better circumstances.
yudashasom | 6 years and 4 months ago
And another thing, a lot of these shelters are run by organizations who leave people in a worse situation than when they entered the facility. I’ve seen it.
yudashasom | 6 years and 4 months ago
Many homeless people have addiction problems, mental illnesses, and others have made bad life decisions. These people are at various points of recovery, getting their lives on track or not doing anything at all to better their situation. IMO when you put them all together, 4-5 people in a room, with nothing to do, the results are not good. Put them to work. @mat315, it doesn’t have to be a “good job” – just something to occupy their time.
SoSlope | 6 years and 4 months ago
@mat315 and @chamby make good points, but the article @chamby posted shows that this isn’t really a NIMBY issue since the CB in question has a lot more beds than people becoming homeless. I think the fair answers is: shelters should be everywhere, integrated into the community so that residents feel a part of the community (kind of the opposite of NIMBY, I suppose; let’s call it IEBY: In Every Back Yard). The question here is whether these two shelters together are so huge and out of context that the community (including schools, services, etc.) cannot absorb its new members. This is doubly true when the new members are transient, short term residents.
chamby | 6 years and 4 months ago
According to the NY Times map/article below, homeless shelters in Brooklyn are very unevenly distributed. Areas such as East New York, Bed Stuy, Brownsville and Crown Heights carry most of the boroughs units by a large margin.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/07/22/nyregion/nyc-homeless-shelter-maps.html
angelique.m.west | 6 years and 4 months ago
The first step for many homeless people has to be to accept free shelter. The rest — counseling, support, affordable housing — come after shelter. Someone doesn’t go straight from the street to a good job or an apartment. They get into a shelter and services flow from there. Shelters are far from ideal no doubt and indeed this one sounds big. But the city desperately needs for shelters and Nimby reactions inevitably raise the question: If you don’t want it in your neighborhood where should it go?
yudashasom | 6 years and 4 months ago
@mat315, giveaways and handouts are not the solution. put these people to work – let them earn it.