Evicted for the holidays
City boots women from Bed-Stuy shelter to make way for homeless men
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Residents of a Bedford-
Stuyvesant women’s shelter
have been given less than 30
days to pack their bags as the
city seeks to repopulate the refuge
with homeless men, according
to locals and shelter residents.
The shelter at 85 Lexington
Ave., operated by Bowery
Residents Committee (BRC),
is being repurposed as a men’s
shelter, with a special focus on
men with mental illness, which
neighbors and shelter residents
say was dropped on their head
with little warning.
“Nobody had notice, the
case managers told us that it
was a surprise to them as much
as it was to us,” said Tonya Williams,
who has lived at the shelter
for nine months.
Shelter residents were notifi
ed on Dec. 4 that they would
have to be out by January.
The city has begun relocating
residents to other shelters
in the city’s system, sending
out carlouds at night, with
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some ending up as far-away as
the Bronx and uptown Manhattan
— and some fl eeing the program
altogether and choosing
to fend for themselves, locals
say.
Wherever they end up, shelter
residents will have to go
through the intake process
again, which according to Williams
can take anywhere from
hours to days, but is reliably dehumanizing.
“You may sit there for a day
or two with little to no sleep and
no ability to wash yourself,”
she said. “It can be pretty inhumane.”
“They are now being separated
from their support system,
their own community of
women who all live together in
the building,” said Keiko Niccolini,
a Lexington Avenue resident
who is circulating a petition
opposing the change of
use.
Niccolini says the shelter
residents were good neighbors,
and that her and her neighbors
are concerned about the new
shelter residents bringing an
unpredictable element to the
residential neighborhood.
“The needs of 100 homeless
men with mental health
issues… present an entirely
different set of needs,” Niccolini
said. “Is there a need for
additional security? Are there
sex offenders that are being
brought in?”
In emails obtained by the
Brooklyn Paper, the CEO and
president of BRC concedes that
the transfers at the Bed-Stuy
shelter were completely the decision
of the DHS, and that BRC
employees were kept in the dark
just as residents were.
“I want to be sure you know
that this was not BRC’s decision,
but rather that of the Department
of Homeless Services,”
Muzzy Rosenblatt wrote in an
email to Niccolini. “I am as disappointed
as you and many of
your neighbors are.”
DHS spokesperson Arianna
Fishman said the transfers
were necessary in order
to accommodate the seasonal
increase in homeless men requiring
shelter due to winter
weather. Fishman declined
to answer a follow up about
whether the same strategy has
been used during past winters.
The transfers come in the
midst of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s
Turning the Tide program, a
revamp of the way the city handles
homeless New Yorkers that
prioritizes housing them in areas
where they have roots and
within reasonable distances of
their support networks, such
as schools, jobs, and doctors offi
ces.
Meanwhile, shelter residents
were told that they can
choose where they end up, but
Williams says the vast tangled
bureaucracy of the DHS assured
that residents would end
up wherever the city could fi t
them.
“They don’t talk to us, the
clients, they treat us like a number,”
Williams said.
Residents of the Clinton Hill shelter are being scattered across the city
to make room for 100 homeless men with mental health issues.
Photo by Caroline Ourso
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