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
Evicted for the holidays
City boots women from Bed-Stuy shelter to make way for homeless men
COURIER LIFE, DECEMBER 20-26, 2019 3
BY BEN VERDE
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
be out by January.
The city has begun relocating
the women to other shelters
in the city’s system, sending
them out in carloads at
night, with 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. “They are not
having continuity in their access
to services so their treatment
is being affected and set
back.”
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
– and neighbors’ questions
have gone unanswered
by Department of Homeless
Services bigwigs.
“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.
“Whenever there’s a confl ict
or anything that happens, you
don’t get to talk to them. It’s
this governing body that’s in
secret — but they do things
that affect your life.”