Manhattan Billionaires’ Row homeless
shelter opens after years-long legal battle
The former Park Savoy Hotel on West 58th Street is now a men’s shelter.
BY RACHEL HOLLIDAY SMITH
THE CITY
After four years and several court
battles, a residence for 140 homeless
men quietly opened, steps
from some of the priciest real estate in
Manhattan.
The West 58th Street shelter is located in
the former Park Savoy Hotel, next door to
an entrance of the 1,000-foot-high One57,
one of several supertall buildings on socalled
Billionaires’ Row.
The shelter opened Friday, the Department
of Homeless Services said, more than
four years after the city fi rst submitted
plans to the state in August 2017 — and
more than three years after neighbors
sued to block the facility. Foes claimed the
building was unsafe, but New York’s highest
court ruled against the group in May.
DHS Commissioner Steve Banks said,
to his knowledge, it was “the longest and
the most well-funded litigation” against a
shelter in the fi ve boroughs.
“Not every shelter opening results in a
court challenge, but where there have been
court challenges, we’ve prevailed in every
one,” he told THE CITY.
Just fi ve men have moved in this week,
and a few will be moving in each week until
the shelter is full, offi cials said.
All Quiet on West 58th
The block was quiet on Monday afternoon,
three days after the facility, run
by shelter operator Westhab, offi cially
welcomed its fi rst residents.
All that indicated the new addition to
the neighborhood was a small white sheet
of paper taped in the front window that
read “Welcome to the Park Savoy rapid
re-housing program.”
The West 58th Street Coalition, the
group that waged the long legal fi ght
against the shelter, spent at least $287,000
to hire lobbyists to help their cause, city
lobbying records show.
Opponents also spent at least $100,000
on billboards in Iowa protesting Mayor Bill
de Blasio as he traveled in the state during
his short-lived 2019 presidential campaign.
The legal team for the West 58th Street
group included Guiliani-era deputy mayor
Randy Mastro, who lobbied the governor’s
offi ce and other state offi cials to not grant
the shelter necessary approvals to open,
THE CITY previously reported.
Mastro also represented a group of
Upper West Side residents who had sued
the city to remove homeless men from the
Lucerne Hotel on West 79th Street, which
had turned into an emergency shelter in
the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Across the street from the shelter, Robin
Siskin, a West 58th Street resident of 30
years, said she gave $25 to the legal fund
for the Coalition and was surprised to hear
the shelter had opened.
The last she had heard about it was in a
Nov. 4 email she’d received from the West
58th Street Coalition that said the group
RACHEL HOLLIDAY SMITH/THECITY
had planned a breakfast meeting with
mayor-elect Eric Adams on Nov. 15.
“It’s an incredible opportunity to meet
with him and express our concerns about
the Savoy and the homeless crisis in general,”
she said. “There’s a huge homeless
crisis in New York, but there are other ways
of solving it.”
Adams’ spokesperson did not immediately
respond to an inquiry from THE
CITY about a meeting with the group.
Inquiries to Michael Fischer, leader of
the West 58th Street Coalition, were not
returned Monday.
Looking to Be ‘A Good
Neighbor’
Catherine Trapani, executive director
of the advocacy group Homeless Services
United, of which Westhab is a member,
said she is glad the “space will get to be
used by people who need it.” She refl ected
“how shameful it is” that the building went
unused for four years.
“We went through an entire pandemic,
and record high numbers of single adults
in the shelter system, and this sat empty,”
she said of the West 58th Street building.
Jim Coughlin, Westhab’s chief operating
offi cer, said the group is looking forward
to “being a good neighbor and working
collaboratively with local residents and
businesses” as well as giving job training
and housing placement services “for every
individual that comes through our doors.”
Banks said, in his experience at the
homeless services agency and before that
as an attorney for the Legal Aid Society for
many years, neighbors of homeless shelters
typically have “lots of concerns” ahead of
an opening, but those “melt away” after
residents actually move in.
“I would urge everyone to focus on the
human beings who need a roof over their
head, and to help us support them,” he
said.
‘Need a Place to Go’
The West 58th Street residence is opening
as the city completes a major shift to move
thousands of people from commercial hotels
— opened mostly in Midtown as emergency
housing at the height of the pandemic —
back to more traditional, “congregate” shelters
where residents sleep multiple people
to a room.
The latest of those moves took place at the
end of September, a spokesperson for DHS
said. There are only two remaining hotels in
use as COVID-19 shelters citywide, one in
Manhattan and one in Queens, both used
on an emergency basis for quarantine and
isolation.
No commercial hotels from the pandemic
emergency batch are currently operating as
shelters in Manhattan Community District 5,
which encompasses Midtown and the West
58th Street location.
Overall, the total number of people in the
city’s shelter system has dropped since the
height of the pandemic, from over 60,000 in
April 2020 to just over 46,000 now, shelter
census data shows. The shelter population
previously peaked at about 61,000 in January
2019.
The majority of the shelter population
are families, according to the Coalition for
the Homeless, and nearly 1 out of 10 public
school children live in unstable or temporary
housing.
Still, single adult men make up about a
third of the shelter system, many of whom
are formerly incarcerated and have unique
challenges to fi nding a place to live, Trapani
said. Their numbers have returned to 2019
levels—with 16,863 in DHS shelter beds
on Friday night — after a pandemic high of
more than 18,500.
“This is the population that needs us the
most right now,” Trapani said. “Of course,
we want permanent housing solutions, and
we’re going to continue to work towards that,
but in the meantime, these guys need a place
to go.”
This article was fi rst published on Nov.
9 by THE CITY, an independent, nonprofi t
news outlet dedicated to hard-hitting reporting
that serves the people of New York.
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