Results tagged “homelessshelter”

To make room for the planned extension of the 7 train, the Port Authority will evict the city's largest homeless drop-in center at the end of March, according to the Daily News. The Open Door shelter — which every day provides meals and showers to some 200 homeless men and women — would have closed sooner, but the city was able to convince the transit agency to delay a part of the line extension project to keep shelter visitors off the streets during the winter. Though the Open Door shelter doesn't have beds, an average of 94 people slept there per night in September. One of the regulars, 63-year-old Lee Parker, told the tabloid he has slept in a chair at the shelter each night for the past two months. "It's better than sleeping out on the street," he said. "It's safe and warm."

The Post says that "two distressed luxury condo buildings -- one in Harlem and another in Downtown Brooklyn -- are in talks with the city to unload their unsold units at fire-sale prices as affordable housing." Hey, if luxury condos can become homeless shelters, why not? While it's unclear which condos are being eyed, apparently the city is negotiating with the banks that foreclosed on the properties. And the city's housing commissioner Rafael Cesetro said the condo developers/banks "would have to take significant losses"—a $500,000 condo could be purchased by the city for $300,000 (plus the developer/bank would get a $50,000 subsidy). Cesetro added that developers were only thinking about the bubble, "Some of the sales assumptions seemed like a stretch in any kind of market. In Downtown Brooklyn, and not on the water, they had buildings underwritten to sell for $800 to $900 a square foot." Will more luxury condos be turned over to the city?

The city is gearing up for more families to enter the shelter system: The NY Times reports, "Because the homeless population this spring was up more than 20 percent over last spring, possibly because of higher unemployment, officials are girding for an all-time high in the number of families in shelters at once, expecting close to 10,000. Already, the number has reached 9,420...In New York, the number of homeless families applying for shelter in the summer has been 28 percent higher than the rest of the year the last three years." Some families wait till the summer to enter the shelter system, so their children can at least finish the school year, after they decided to leave terrible apartment situations (one family's fight with their landlord left them without gas or electricity for months) or when their relatives kick them. One woman said, "My sister said we couldn’t stay with her anymore. I said once [my daughter is] done with school, we’d get out." The Bloomberg administration says it's ready, and will use some not-quite full shelters and vacant apartment buildings.

As the debate to legalize gay marriage rages on within the chaotic confines of Albany, two young men took matters into their own hands and hoodwinked their way into a marriage certificate at the City Clerk's Office. Hakim Nelson and Jason Stenson were married on May 26th, sliding under the radar on Nelson's food stamps card, which lists him as a female. No one at the clerk's office raised an eyebrow since Nelson arrived wearing an orange dress with white leggings. The two believe that they made history with Stenson saying, "People in Albany can say, 'Look, it's already happened, so let's just make it legal.'" Hakim Nelson and Jason Stenson, you might be New York's first gay marriage to go public, what are you gonna do now? We're taking our story to the New York Post! The Post talked to a city official, who seemed pretty unfazed, telling the paper, "If someone is trying to willfully sneak through, we try to stop it. But you have instances of females [who] have male names and vice versa. You've heard of a boy named Sue, right?" The newlyweds have been honeymooning at a homeless youth shelter in Brooklyn.

After publishing that quintessential degentrification story about a new luxury condo in Crown Heights being converted to a homeless shelter, the Daily News reports that after reading the article, at least four homeless people "flocked" to the building yesterday.

Instead of boarding up an unoccupied luxury condo in Crown Heights and letting it fall into disrepair, the owner has done the unthinkable: arranged to let homeless people live there. The new apartments, which were originally priced up to $350,000, seem pretty nice; one resident who moved in with his wife and two young daughters tells the Daily News, "When I first saw it, I was like, 'Damn, everything is brand new.' It has marble counters and marble floors in the bathrooms, too. I like the big kitchen. That's my favorite." Another new resident, an out-of-work truck driver from Miami who's living with his teenage son, crows, "The closet in the main room is so big you could put a twin bed in there." Lucky homeless!

After the city recently started charging rent to the working homeless residing in shelters, questions and criticism soon followed. Now, the NY Times reports, "The Bloomberg administration has stopped charging rent to homeless people who have income and live in city shelters, temporarily suspending a state-mandated program that has been marked by mismanagement and the threat of a lawsuit." The city started collecting rent because of a 1997 state law that hadn't been enforced; recently, the state asked the city to enforce it and pay back $2.4 million in homeless aid. Apparently there were "technical issues" (some notices had errors in how much rent was owed, some notices weren't sent to other families) and the city still hopes to have some sort of rent program. Still, some homeless residents said they were being charged more than 50% of their income (which isn't allowed), they weren't even notified and that this prevents them for saving up to move out of the shelter one day. The Legal Aid Society, which threatened to sue, said, "We would hope that the entire concept would be re-evaluated."

Crown Heights is up in arms about a Manhattan center for homeless men moving in. The NY Sun reports on the intake center, currently housed at Bellevue and which may move to the Bedford-Atlantic Armory Shelter. At a community board meeting this week, the residents expressed their anger, one stating: "Now that we can walk outside without getting shot, you've decided to throw sand back on our heads." Others fear the neighborhood fall victim to an increase in crime and a decrease in the value of the brownstones. A homeless man who has been to the Armory Shelter said he's "seen people openly shoot heroin, shoot crack, smoke weed" there and that placing the city's main intake hub in the dysfunctional facility "is totally and utterly absurd." The plan still needs to be approved by the Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance.