Stories to follow in SW Queens
TIMESLEDGER | QNS.COM | JAN. 3-JAN. 9, 2020 17
BY BILL PARRY
All eyes in southwest
Queens during 2020 will be on
the city and how it moves forward
with its plans for a homeless
shelter in Glendale and
how far City Councilman Robert
Holden and his constituents
are willing to go to stop the
proposal in its tracks.
The city’s Department of
Homeless Services will submit
its five-year $61.8 million contract
with the service provider
Westhab to the city Comptroller’s
office for a standard review
to build a shelter for 200
homeless men in a former factory
at 78-16 Cooper Avenue.
The communities of southwest
Queens first rose up
against the proposal back
when it was first proposed in
2013 and Holden has said he
was lied to by the DHS when
they told him more than a year
ago they were no longer considering
the site as a homeless
shelter. Holden spent the past
year in talks with several city
agencies including the School
Construction Authority in the
hopes of building a new school
for students with special needs
at the site and to find an alternative
location in his district
for the shelter.
DHS revisited their plan for
a homeless shelter on the site
and once again the communities
mobilized. In April the
Glendale Middle Village Coalition
filled two buses with protesters
and traveled to Jericho,
Long Island to rally outside the
home and synagogue of factory
owner Michael Wilner.
Mike Papa, a lead organizer
for the rally, addressed the protestors’
source of fear, that the
shelter would house “200 single
males” who were “coming right
out of Rikers Island” and would
include “sexual offenders.”
The rhetoric worsened in
October at a Community Board
5 meeting in October where a
woman declared “I hope somebody’s
gonna burn that place
down,” to cheers from the overcrowded
auditorium at Christ
the King High School. Raquel
Namuche, an organizer with
the Ridgewood Tenants Union
appealed to the crowd to push
for more affordable housing.
She was shouted down so vociferously
that her mother
moved in to protect her from
the crowd.
In early November, hundreds
of protesters filled both
sides of Cooper Avenue at the
underpass between 74th and
79th Streets holding signs saying
“Stop shelter industrialists”
and Guardian Angels
founder and conservative
talk show host Curtis Sliwa
charged that Mayor Bill de Blasio
was acting out of contempt
and disdain for the residents of
Maspeth, Glendale and Middle
Villages. Sliwa had joined several
of the rallies that opposed
the city’s plan to convert the
Maspeth Holiday Inn Express
into a shelter for homeless men
in 2016, in a series of events
that propelled Holden to an upset
of then-City Councilwoman
Elizabeth Crowley in 2017.
The following week, Holden
and his constituents attended
a public hearing the city held
over the proposal. Addressing
representatives from the DHS
and the mayor’s office, Holden
argued that the project should
not go forward because of its
proximity to schools and nearby
sports complexes and what
he claimed to be procedural
missteps in its rollout.
He continued to claim that
he had made proposals for alternative
locations for shelters
that DHS Commissioner Steven
Banks liked, even though
the agency confirmed to QNS
that it found all of his proposals
unviable. Holden finished
by saying that he called for a
city investigation into the contract
procurement and asked
that the project be delayed until
that investigation is complete.
Dotty Wenzel, a Glendale
resident since 1978, described
her neighborhood as a secluded
little community as
part of her argument that the
shelter would turn the fabric
of the community into a
“nightmare.”
Wenzel’s testimony served
as a reminder that Glendale’s
secluded quality is not an accident,
but a result of zoning and
direct action from residents.
For nearly a decade before
the shelter project was first
proposed, residents have been
fighting against big buildings
and large influxes of new residents.
The disruption of this
idea of Glendale as a neighborhood,
a characteristic that residents
have defended for years,
has scared them.
“I literally have nightmares
once a week crying in my sleep
because of what’s going to happen
in my neighborhood,” Diana
Shanley testified.
DHS will consider their arguments
before making their
final decision. Paul Romain,
the Human Resources Administration’s
Chief Contracting
Officer who listened to the arguments,
said that he couldn’t
say what the next step of the
process will involve.
2020 PREVIEW
Southwest Queens communities oppose the city’s plan to convert a Glendale factory into a shelter for 200 homeless men. Photo by Robert Pozarycki
/QNS.COM
