Latest in NYC’s homeless musical chairs: Upper West Side shelter residents to move downtown, residents of Midtown and Brooklyn shelters will stay put
By Ellen Moynihan and Molly Crane-Newman
New York Daily News
September 25, 2020
Disabled residents of a Midtown homeless shelter can stay put after the city Department of Homeless Services scrapped plans to move them out to make way for single men temporarily housed at a luxury Upper West Side hotel.
Instead, residents of the Lucerne Hotel on the Upper West Side will be moved to a hotel in the Wall Street area, city officials said. City Council member Helen Rosenthal (D-Manhattan) identified the hotel as the Radisson Hotel on William St., near Wall Street.
The shelter will be the first of its kind in downtown Manhattan, city officials said.
The decision means residents of the Harmonia Hotel homeless shelter on E. 31st St. can stay put. A Harmonia resident said families learned of the decision several hours after meeting with Marco A. Carrión, Commissioner of the Mayor’s Community Affairs Unit, on Friday.
“We just got the decision that we’re allowed to stay. And all the tenants, they’re so happy,” said Mike Bonano, 50, who’s lived with his wife at the shelter for five months.
“Each one of us, we have a story,” Bonano said of the Harmonia residents. “I think we touched him [Carrión] enough that he got our message across to the mayor.”
The city’s decision followed weeks of backlash over Homeless Services' plans to move disabled Harmonia residents to other shelters around the city to make way for residents temporarily housed at The Lucerne.
Harmonia residents were menaced by a game of homeless musical chairs the city started in response to a vocal and well-organized group, Upper West Siders for Safe Streets, which complained about the homeless men at the Lucerne, who were moved there to curb the spread of Covid-19. The group has hired a lawyer and threatened legal action.
Shannon Luchs, a senior case manager at the Harmonia, said the unexpected news surprised staff and residents.
“We’ve been told that the shelter will not close. We’re staying. We’re still here for now,” Luchs said.
The Daily News reported Sept. 10 that city officials ordered residents to move out of the Harmonia shelter to make room for homeless men the city wanted to remove from the Lucerne.
Thirty-four people were ordered immediately out of the Harmonia before the city issued a temporary freeze on the process Sept. 11. Officials blamed the sudden Harmonia removals on a “communication glitch.”
Families with children were also to be removed from Flatlands Family Residence, a homeless shelter in Brooklyn, to make space for women housed at the LIC Plaza Hotel in Long Island City, The News reported on Sept. 12.
Homeless families at the Flatlands shelter will not be moved “at this time,” city officials said. But over the long term, the city plans to “transition it to a shelter for adults.”
The women at LIC Plaza Hotel will remain there as the agency searches for “alternative, non-congregate sites” to transfer them as the it phases out use of emergency COVID hotels, the city statement said.
Rosenthal — whose Upper West Side district includes the Lucerne Hotel — said the string of decisions that led the controversy is a “slap in the face” to Lucerne shelter residents who have followed the rules and tried to get their lives on track, and must now move again.
“It reflects a lack of a homeless policy because what’s happening is, the mayor is simply reacting to the threat of a lawsuit," said Rosenthal. "That’s all that this was.”
No comments:
Post a Comment