20 THE QUEENS COURIER • SEPTEMBER 29, 2016 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT www.qns.com Hundreds of Queens residents take their fi ght against city homeless shelters to Bellerose BY DOMENICK RAFTER editorial@qns.com/@QNS The Maspeth shelter war opened up an eastern front on Sept. 24. Protesters working to kill a proposed homeless shelter for adults at the Holiday Inn Express on 55th Road in Maspeth headed out to Bellerose on the morning of Saturday, Sept. 24, to join eastern Queens groups in protesting the conversion of at least two hotels on Jericho Turnpike into homeless shelters. Several hundred people gathered outside the Bellerose Inn at 249- 05 Jericho Tpke. for the protest organized by the Queens/Nassau Joint Task Force in association with the Maspeth Middle Village Task Force and the Juniper Park Civic Association. Afterward, they marched to the home of Harshad Patel, who owns both the Bellerose Inn and the Holiday Inn Express in Maspeth, as well as a Quality Inn several blocks from the Bellerose Inn that also houses homeless families. The demonstrators decried the city’s policy to house homeless persons in hotels, which many protesters referred to as “warehousing.” “It is unconscionable that they would just throw homeless families in crappy hotel rooms,” said protester Nancy Houlton. “There’s no plan to get them good housing, just throw them in a hotel and pretend everything is okay.” At the center of the controversy has been the conversion of or usage of rooms in city motels to house homeless persons. The city blames the need on the high homeless population, but the protesters suggested the policy was a scheme for hotel owners to make money by charging the city exorbitant prices for accommodations. “Rather than fi nd a real solution to this problem, the mayor is just Queens Politics & More BY MIKE FRICCHIONE Some of the signs at the protest outside the Bellerose Inn on Sept. 24. helping out his crony buddies,” one protester suggested. Patel was a main target of the protest. Outside of Patel’s house on 262nd Street in Glen Oaks, the protesters chanted “No Homeless Shelter,” “De Blasio Must Go” and “Harshad Patel, You Should Be In Jail.” The opponents thought they had gotten some good news recently when Patel announced that he had decided not to move forward with the plan for the Maspeth shelter, and state Senator Tony Avella announced last week that Patel had decided to phase out the homeless families in the Bellerose hotels. But Mike LoCascio, one of the leaders of the Maspeth protest and a member of Community Board 5, called Avella a “liar,” and told protests they shouldn’t trust the reports that Patel is backing away from using his hotels as a shelter. Tony Nunziato, president of the Maspeth Middle Village Task Force and Republican candidate for State Assembly in District 30, which includes Maspeth, said Patel was supposed to meet with the protester on Saturday morning, but failed to show. “He lied to us again,” Nunziato said. Joe Concannon, a retired NYPD captain and former City Council candidate who announced he would run again next year, said the homeless families in the shelter deserved more than just hotel rooms. “We are here today to protest the city policy that is treating the homeless population without dignity and humanity,” he said. “This his happening all over the city. It’s happening in Maspeth. It’s happening in East Elmhurst. It’s happening in Corona. It’s happening in Bellerose.” “They should be in Creedmoor!” one protest yelled out, referring to the mental health facility. Concannon rejected that statement, explaining that veterans, the disabled, victims of domestic violence and people who work but cannot afford rent are among the homeless and they shouldn’t be stereotyped as mentally ill or Photos by Domenick Rafter drug-addicted. A fellow protester then clarifi ed that the comment was meant to imply that housing should be built on unused land near Creedmoor, and wasn’t meant as a slight against the homeless. The protestors, and offi cials, laid blame for the issue at the feet of Mayor Bill de Blasio. Even state Senator Joe Addabbo, who attended the protest, said the mayor is at fault. “If the mayor had shown early on a collaborative effort to deal with this problem, we would be happy to help,” he said. The protest also brought out residents and offi cials from Nassau County, which lies just across Jericho Turnpike from both shelters. Third Congressional District candidate and state Senator Jack Martins were among those present. As a result of the protest, the de Blasio administration worked out a deal with the Children’s Museum of Manhattan to bring families living in the Bellerose shelter on a fi eld trip to keep them away from the demonstration. ROOM FOR DEBATE New York once again became the epicenter of presidential politics, as Hofstra University played host to the fi rst general election debate of the campaign season. A record-breaking 81.4 million people tuned in to see the two most hated candidates of either major American political party square off against each other. An historic debate it was, even if it still trails in ratings to Super Bowl 50, which drew 111.9 million viewers on CBS in February. Security was tight on Hofstra’s campus, with Secret Service so abundant, they couldn’t really be considered secret. Even Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, a Hillary Clinton supporter and surrogate on hand for the debate, was screened multiple times for the highstakes, no-holds-barred competition. It seemed like it was to be the fi ght of the century, but many on both sides left feeling that it was overhyped and a bit underwhelmed. Many local student reactions to the debate were of complete letdown. Vinny Ambrosino, a student at Hofstra from Whitestone, described the letdown most poignantly when he said, “Nobody said anything different, and nobody answered the questions.” But in many regards, modern campaign and campaigners are taught not to answer the questions. Repetition of key words and phrases, though boring, is considered the gold standard in debates because campaigns rely on drilling messages into voters’ heads. For candidates, many times saying something new and “out there” isn’t worth saying because campaigns believe that unless it can be converted into a simple, digestible sound bytes that can be repeated every day, then most people will forget. Which is why after debates both sides will claim victory and supporters on both sides will swear that their preferred candidates performed better. Not surprisingly, it’s also why the large majority of undecided and moderate voters eventually switch channels or turn off their televisions whenever they start to watch a debate.
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