WWW.QNS.COM RIDGEWOOD TIMES JANUARY 2, 2020 17
Southwest Queens communities oppose the city’s plan to convert a Glendale factory into a shelter for 200 homeless men. Photo: Robert Pozarycki/QNS
BY BILL PARRY
BPARRY@SCHNEPSMEDIA.COM
@QNS
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 fi ve-year $61.8
million contract with the service provider
Westhab to the city Comptroller’s
offi ce 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
fi rst rose up against the proposal back
when it was fi rst 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 fi nd 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 fi lled
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 off enders.”
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
fi lled 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 offi ce, 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
confi rmed to QNS that it found all of his
proposals unviable. Holden fi nished 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 fi rst proposed, residents
have been fi ghting against big buildings
and large infl uxes 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 testifi ed.
DHS will consider their arguments
before making their fi nal 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
Top stories to follow in SW Queens
link
/WWW.QNS.COM
link
