12 JULY 13, 2017 RIDGEWOOD TIMES WWW.QNS.COM
EDITORIAL
Don’t leave Queens in the dark on shelters
Just a few months ago, a rather
THE HOT TOPIC
STORY:
Five straight weekends without E
& F trains between Forest Hills &
Jamaica
SUMMARY:
The E train and the F line will be
suspended in parts of Queens for
fi ve consecutive weekends in July
and August.
REACH:
30,650 people (as of 7/10/17)
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(subject: Queens Snaps).
alarming rumor spread around
East Elmhurst that the Courtyard
Marriott Hotel near LaGuardia Airport
would shut down and become
the latest homeless shelter in Queens.
The rumor alarmed many in the
community, and the hotel’s management
denied that there was any truth
to it. Fast forward to last week, however,
and the story is quite diff erent. The
hotel will indeed close in the weeks to
come, and now questions remain about
what will become of the 288-room site
in a city starved not just for shelter
space, but also for any residential real
estate space.
The mayor has publicly stated that
he doesn’t want the city to continue
reusing underused hotels as shelters
for homeless people, but his word
hasn’t stopped the city’s Department of
Homeless Services from doing so. Hotels
in Maspeth, Ozone Park, Elmhurst,
South Jamaica and Woodside, just to
name a few neighborhoods, have become
homeless havens in recent years.
For many Queens residents, it’s
bad enough that the city would open
a shelter in their backyard. What
really grinds their gears is that, too
oft en, the city Department of Homeless
Services (DHS) announces a shelter’s
opening only aft er it has moved
homeless residents in. This happened
at the former Pan American Hotel
in Elmhurst back in 2014 and, more
recently, at a Comfort Inn in Ozone
Park this past year.
Several Queens state senators, including
Joseph Addabbo, Tony Avella
and Jose Peralta, supported legislation
that passed the state Senate last
month which would require the city’s
government to be more transparent
when it comes to siting and opening
homeless shelters.
The legislation would give community
boards the power to call a public
hearing on a shelter proposal. The DHS
would also be required to provide a
community with a minimum week’s
notice before opening an emergency
shelter somewhere. Both of these caveats
are a defi nite improvement on the
current process, in which communities
are largely kept in the dark.
However, this legislation is stuck in
Albany; with the session having ended
for the year, any new action will likely
come in 2018. Homelessness remains
an immediate crisis in New York City;
the DHS is constantly in search of
temporary and permanent shelters
to place homeless men, women and/or
children. The city isn’t going to wait for
the state legislature on this topic.
If the city is considering the
Courtyard Marriott at LaGuardia
Airport as a possible shelter, we
urge the city to make their intentions
known immediately. No one
should be left in the dark on an issue
this important.
