Rally urges city to leave Upper
West Side shelter residents alone
BY MARK HALLUM
Upper West Siders and elected
offi cials rallied on Sept. 27 in opposition
to Mayor Bill de Blasio’s
decision to move over 200 residents from
private quarters at the Lucerne Hotel to
other locations across the city.
While the mayor is sticking to his plan
to remove the men and women from the
Lucerne within the next week protestors at
a press conference Sunday said the removal
was the result of a lack of housing policy
and NIMBYism.
Larry Thomas, a resident of the Lucerne,
said he’s looking for housing, but he and
others have been “shuffl ed around like
cattle.”
“It ain’t a solution to just keep shuffl ing
people around. The solution is to get the
people that are ready to leave out so you
can have room for the people who still need
services,” Thomas said. “I appreciate the
staff here because they helped. They never
gave up on me.”
Councilwoman Helen Rosenthal called
on de Blasio to go to the Lucerne Hotel and
the other shelter locations to meet with the
residents before uprooting their lives and
City Comptroller Scott Stringer addresses the crowd on Sunday.
possibly sending them to another hotel for
the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic
at 52 Williams St.
“Having them move back to their
congregate shelter after being moved to
another hotel is the defi nition of instability,”
Rosenthal said. “The mayor needs
some guiding principals and then stick with
those guiding principals because otherwise,
a high-priced, well-connected lawyer like
Randy Mastro can come along and set a
precedent for what will now happen in
PHOTO BY MARK HALLUM
every other community if you let this decision
stand.”
Mastro was hired by West Side Community
Organization, a group of Upper West
Side residents concerned by quality of life
issues in the neighborhood after the city
Department of Homeless Services moved
homeless men and women from congregate
shelters where COVID-19 ran wild.
“From the beginning, I understood and
believed the City Administration would do
the right thing and move this vulnerable
population out of the Lucerne Hotel and
into a proper shelter where they will
receive the services they need,” attorney
for WestCo Randy Mastro said on Friday.
“And today, the City Administration has
done just that, confi rming it will be moving
folks out of this SRO hotel and into a
proper shelter over the next 10 days in close
proximity to the services they need and
deserve. This is a win-win for all parties
and something everyone who truly cares
about the homeless should be supporting.”
City Comptroller Scott Stringer, a 2021
mayoral candidate, went as far as to suggest
the human rights of the homeless men and
women was being violated by the actions
of the de Blasio administration.
“First of all, you cannot separate homeless
services and low income housing. If
you’re not doing well with low income housing,
you’re not doing to move people from
homelessness into permanent housing,”
Stringer said. “The city has gone from
spending $1.6 billion a year for managing a
homeless crisis… What do we have to show
for it? We made a bunch of slumlords rich.”
Also speaking were state Senator Brian
Benjamin and Manhattan Borough President
Gale Brewer.
Strike averted at Hunter College Campus School
following independent inspection of building
BY ALEJANDRA O’CONNELLDOMENECH
Teachers at the Hunter College Campus
School returned on Tuesday for
in-person classes after an independent
COVID safety inspection cleared the
building, averting a possible strike.
For weeks, teachers at the K-12 school
controlled by CUNY have criticized administrators’
reopening plan for not including
COVID-19 testing, safety inspections and
for installing untested “air purifi ers” instead
of HEPA fi lters in classroom ventilation systems.
Teachers, represented by the union
the Professional Staff Congress, voted to
support a safety strike over the weekend
if CUNY did not agree to an independent
inspection of the school ahead of reopening.
“The faculty and staff of the Hunter College
Campus Schools took a brave stand
for the safety of students, teachers and the
community. Because of their advocacy and
the support of their union, HCCS has been
forced to implement a whole series of new
safety protocols,” said President of PSC
Hunter College Campus School on the Upper East Side.
Barbara Bowen. “That the teachers were
ready to strike helped to win a commitment
to regular COVID testing, a safety inspection
by an independent inspector, containment
of dangerous mold, and a temporary
restraining order that impelled Hunter
to install HEPA air fi lters in classrooms.
PHOTO VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
None of these protections was in place
until the teachers and their union fought
for them.”
Last week, a New York Supreme Court
judge granted the union a temporary restraining
barring the Hunter administration
from requiring teachers and staff to return
to classrooms without HEPA fi lters. Poor
ventilation has been a longstanding issue
given that there are virtually no windows
in the “fortress-like” school nicknamed
“the Brick Prison.” CUNY administrators
purchased HEPA fi lters shortly after the
union fi led the restraining order and fi nished
installing them last week.
CUNY also agreed to an independent
safety inspection at the Silberman School
of Social Work where 9th and 10th graders
will take some of their classes on Oct. 1.
but has not yet said when the inspection
will take place.
Roughly 500,000 students returned to
school on Tuesday for in-person learning
as a part of the city’s hybrid model, according
to City Hall. After delaying the
start of in-person learning twice, de Blasio
announced that pre-K, 3-K and District 75
schools would return to schools on Sept. 21
and students at K-5 and K-8 schools would
begin in-person classes today. Students and
middle schools and high schools taking part
in hybrid learning will return to school on
Oct. 1.
4 October 1, 2020 Schneps Media