For the second time in less than a week, New York City canceled plans on Monday for a Chinatown shelter where community outcry The complex efforts of Mayor Eric Adams to move homeless New Yorkers off the streets.
The 94-bed shelter will be located in a closed hotel at the busy intersection of Grand Street and Bowery. The site is close to where an Asian-American woman was murdered in February in an attack for which a homeless man has been charged. The operator of the shelter, Housing Works, planned to allow the use of illegal drugs in the building, a move that drew fierce condemnation from local residents.
Both canceled shelters fall under the specialized category known as safe havens or stable hotels, which offer more privacy and social services and are less restrictive than traditional shelters. system. Mr. Adams announced plans last week to open at least 900 rooms in such shelters by mid-2023.
The city’s Department of Homeless Services, which has previously said that the large number of homeless people in the neighborhood make it an important site for adding temporary capacity, said on Thursday. Two that they will open a facility in an area with fewer homeless services. .
“Our goal is to consistently work with communities to understand their needs and equitably distribute shelters across all five counties to serve vulnerable New Yorkers,” the department said in a statement. our most vulnerable.”
This is also the reason that the city gave last week before the announcement it won’t open another Chinatown shelterat 47 Madison Street.
But uncertainty about which union workers will staff shelters could also play a role in sheltering cancellations.
Housing Works CEO Charles King said the organization was required to employ workers from the Retail, Wholesale and Department Stores Union, which represents Housing Works employees.
But New York’s powerful Hospitality and Gaming Council, which has close ties to the mayor and is better known as the Hotel Board, says it has a current contract. with the building’s owner, a former Best Western hotel, asking the building to employ its own workers.
“There is only one contract for this building, and that is ours,” said Rich Maroko, chairman of the Hospitality Trade Council.
Mr. King said Housing Works had proposed a compromise whereby the building’s owner would hire eight Hospitality Trade Council staff. But he said Gary Jenkins, the city commissioner for social services who oversees the Department of Homeless Services, told him the city is pulling its peg on shelters at the insistence of the Board of Trade. Hotel.
“It’s been really clear to me that the mayor is more interested in pleasing this one union than addressing the needs of the homeless,” Mr King said.
The Department of Homeless Services did not respond to a request for comment on Mr. King’s assertion. Mr. Maroko said the hotel union had urged City Hall not to make the move.
RWDSU, which is negotiating the controversial contract with Housing Works, for its part, said: “We do not want to transfer hotel workers or see this hotel converted.”
During the 2021 mayoral campaign, the hotel union, which has nearly 40,000 members, gave Mr. Adams his first major labor endorsement.
Susan Lee, founder of the Coalition for Community Improvement and Conservation, a Chinatown group that campaigns for anti-shelter protests, applauded the city for “listening to the concerns of the Neighborhood community Ship”.
She said she hopes the hotel will reopen as a tourist hotel and help the neighborhood recover from the pandemic.
Dana Rubinstein contribution report.
