Department of Homeless Services Runs Scared From CB7 Protest

Aaron Biller, president of the community group Neighborhood in the Nineties, speaks out against the homeless shelter at the community board protest.

James writes:

Hundreds of Upper West Siders packed the small conference room of the Community Board 7 tonight for what was supposed to be a face-to-face with New York City's Department of Homeless Services and Samaritan Village, the people attempting to open a 200-bed men's shelter in a tourist hotel on West 94th Street. The hotel is being forced to close thanks to disastrous legislation in Albany that had been trumpeted by this community's local representative, Councilwoman Gale Brewer. (Go here for the complete story.)

Peter Thorne from WPIX Channel 11 showed up, along with several newspaper and online writers--only thing is, the Department of Homeless Services and Samaritan Village declined to appear. The meeting therefore did little to answer residents' concerns about why a shelter has been proposed for a family neighborhood, a block from a school, that is already saturated with such facilities (and where few residents but the politicians had a problem with the tourist hotels). As one resident, Miriam, said in her statement to the board: "this has become a middle-class family neighborhood. People have put their blood, sweat, and tears into this neighborhood." Why, she wondered, should taxpayer money go to undermine the sweat equity and investment that residents have spent restoring their neighborhood by paying for a homeless shelter to move in?

One answer came from a representative from the office of Congressman Jerry Nadler, once a resident of 94th Street himself. City government is able to offer lavish deals to landlords to use their buildings as "emergency" shelters because the city can tap into Federal money from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. Such a story goes to show the damage that wasteful federal dollars can do to a local population when used to override market conditions. Through federal taxpayer money, each of the SRO's tiny rooms could be rented for homeless use at thousands of dollars a month, above market demand. That's a powerful calculus. As one resident put it to me, associates in his law firm can't afford to live on the Upper West Side, but thanks to sweetheart deals from the Feds, a large homeless population can.

Councilwoman Brewer herself declined to show for the meeting. Several questions therefore remain unanswered, for the DHS, and for Brewer:

1. Can the shelter be fought on legal grounds? Is the shelter consistant with the requirement of "permanent housing" stipulated in Albany's legislation?

2. Could anything be done, through rezoning, to allow the hotels to continue operation? If tonight's protest is any indication, only the SRO Law Project (Brewer's advocacy group) and the hotel workers union have a problem with them.

3. What can be done to have the permanent tenants of the hotel stay put, which could prevent the shelter from moving in? Some have been offered $50,000 each to vacate their apartments.

4. How much did Gale Brewer know, and when? Faced with community unrest, Brewer has attempted to reposition herself as an opponent of the facility. She should be applauded for taking this position, but Homeless Services has reported that Brewer's office was in communication about the proposal before it was first announced to the public.

5. If Brewer knew about it, why did she do nothing to stop it before it became a done deal? Were her actions guided by union pressure or a backroom deal with the city to deliver the shelter to DHS, which has now backfired. 

6. The Upper West Side has become a centrist community. When will the neighborhood start seeing local and state representation that is more in line with their interests (rather than merely the interests of trade unions--see Brewer's own friends list). The radical control of the Upper West Side's Democratic Clubs cannot be sustained now that the neighborhood's voters have realized the damage that bad legislation, proposed by their representatives, can do.

The tense scene at tonight's meeting. 

Peter Thorne has filed an excellent report on the DHS disappearing act for WPIX 11. Full story here:
 

UPDATE! Reports continue to come in:

Leslie Albrecht of DNAinfo on the DHS no-show (including a cameo by yours truly in the brown plaid shirt)

Gina Lee of the Columbia Spectator

UWS residents to protest 94th Street shelter tonight

James writes:

Neighborhood in the Nineties and other community groups on the Upper West Side have organized a protest at tonight's meeting of the Health & Human Services Committee of Community Board 7 over the conversion of a local hotel into a homeless shelter. Here are the details from Aaron Biller, head of NitN:

Show up TONIGHT at CB7, 250 West 87 St. on the proposed homeless shelter at The Alexander at 306 West 94th Street – Let the City know that transient housing is not “permanent” housing;
CB7 Health & Human Services Committee
***At Community Board 7, 250 West 87 Street**
T O N I G H T @ 7 PM
Be there early. We are First on the agenda:
ITEM #1. 306 West 94th ST (West End Ave-Riverside DR.) Presentation by Samaritan Village and the NYC Department of Homeless Services on the program for 306 West 94th Street.

Leslie Albrecht at DNAinfo has more details. Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal and the Daily News editorial board pick up on the story I first reported here (complete recap here).

SROs: the latest on a policy disaster for the Upper West Side

James writes:

The disastrous legislation banning the SRO hotels on the Upper West Side, which I first wrote about in The Daily News, continues to fall out around the politicians who planned it, with still no satisfactory resolution for local residents.

When the hotels were banned through legislation in Albany, its advocates claimed the move would protect tenants rights by preventing the spread of so-called "illegal" businesses. Instead, the legislation cut off the only means of free-market profitability for the buildings' owners--whether unintentionally or by design remains an open question.

Rather than open up more space for tenants, the legislation has sent SRO landlords into the arms of city agencies looking to utilize the buildings for their own programs, and willing to offer sweetheart deals with taxpayer money to do it. In the case of one building on 94th Street, this means that a pleasant hotel that was welcomed by the community will be converted into a 200-bed homeless shelter with a 9-year contract.

 The Upper West Side is a liberal neighborhood, but it already bears an unfair share of such facilities, against the spirit of "Fair Share" in the city charter. As one resident put it, the neighborhood is rightly facing a case of "compassion fatigue."

The News editorial, distributed through the email lists of neighborhood organizations, in particular Neighborhood in the Nineties managed by Aaron Biller, mobilized a swift response. Hundreds of concerned residents showed up at the Community Board 7 meeting on January 3 to voice their complaints. Their protests were covered by CBS news and other agencies.

Following this event, The New York Times picked up on the story on January 14. As I made clear in my editorial, despite the rhetoric, the SRO legislation does nothing to protect tenants. In fact, it has caused a crisis for the tenants who still live in the permanent apartments within the converted hotels. In the case of 94th Street, the tenants welcomed the hotel in their buildings. The hotels were certainly a welcome improvement over the dilapidated state of the buildings decades ago (click here to see a fascinating photo essay of SRO living four decades ago). Now, ironically, they will most likely lose their homes as the homeless shelter moves in. The Times story profiles some of these tenants.

Within hours of the appearance of the Times story, Councilwoman Gale Brewer called a press conference in front of the 94th Street hotel. Her event took place Sunday at noon. She brought in Congressman Charlie Rangel, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, and other politicians to join her in denouncing the conversion of the building into a shelter.

As a member of the "Illegal Hotels Working Group," Brewer was one of the politicians championing the hotel ban in Albany. She has built her political career around advancing "tenants rights." Yet legislation she supported has now become a disaster for tenants in the building and all residents in the neighborhood.

And a disaster for her political future. Brewer created the problem that she is now attempting to claim to fix. Her calling in Rangel and others at short notice is an indication of how much political damage she may foresee for herself if the homeless shelter goes through against the wishes of a mobilized constituency, due either to her own ineptitude or to willful collusion. (One also wonders if Rangel, who was censored by congress for taking up multiple rent-controlled apartments for his own use, is the best advocate for tenant rights).

Above is a video I took of the Rangel/Stringer/Brewer press rally.

Brewer wants to get in front of this story for her own political future, but her ability to do so will depend on two things: whether she will be able to stop the conversion of the building into a shelter, as well as the conversion of other nearby SRO hotels into supportive housing. Second, the question remains of how much she knew about the shelter and when. This report quotes a source at the Department of Homeless Services saying that the agency had been in many talks with Brewer and the Community Board about the shelter. This implies that either little was initially done to oppose it, or the deal was  accepted by Brewer before she faced strong community opposition. This open question calls for further investigation.

The case of the SROs conversion, which remains unresolved despite community uproar, is just one example of how bad government policy has retarded positive growth on the Upper West Side. The questions are why and what can be done about it. These are the systemic issues I am currently investigating for a longer essay in City Journal magazine. Stay tuned...