24 THE QUEENS COURIER • OCTOBER 12, 2017 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT WWW.QNS.COM
More questions than answers
on Sunnyside homeless hotel
BY ANGELA MATUA
amatua@qns.com / @AngelaMatua
Representatives from the Department
of Homeless Services (DHS) attended
a Community Board 2 meeting in
Sunnyside to answer a host of questions
about a hotel in the area that is being used
to house homeless families.
Th e hotel, a Best Western at 38-05
Hunters Point Ave., started admitting
homeless families on Sept. 26. But elected
offi cials were notifi ed only 24 hours
beforehand, angering residents and
causing offi cials like Assemblywoman
Catherine Nolan, Congressman Joe
Crowley and Councilman Jimmy Van
Bramer to criticize the agency for its late
notice.
Amanda Nasner, the Queens borough
director of external aff airs at DHS, and
Lori Boozer, a special adviser to the agency,
were at the Oct. 5 meeting to provide
information about the hotel and answer
questions from community board members.
Boozer said that there are currently
60,000 New Yorkers in the shelter system
and 70 percent are families with children.
About 33 percent of the families have an
employed person heading the household.
According to Shawn Cook, director
of program operations for the hotel’s
service provider Childrens Community
Services, there are currently 57 families
living in the Best Western with 128
children. Th ere are 46 female-led households
and 11 male-led households residing
there.
Families have a curfew of 9 p.m. and
there is 24-hour security with guards
conducting perimeter checks every half
hour to make sure people are not loitering,
he said. Families also have access to
services such as fi nancial empowerment
and job placement, and the Department
of Education visits the facility every day to
escort children to school. Only one child
at the hotel attends a local school – P.S.
199, according to Nasner.
Th e conversation became heated when
board member Patrick O’Brien, a lawyer,
asked if the agency was following its own
policies when making emergency declarations.
New York City is mandated to
house the homeless due to a 1981 court
order. But O’Brien wanted to know why
the agency was calling this an emergency
when the city is aware that there is a
homeless crisis.
“You’re doing these things under an
emergency deceleration because the rules of
the procurement policy board say that if it is
an emergency you don’t have to go through
an RFP (request for proposals), you don’t
have to notify the community until aft er
the event,” O’Brien said. “But you’re disregarding
the fact that the emergency defi ned
in the procurement boards rules require
that it be an unforeseen event.”
He then argued that homelessness has
The Department of Homeless Services attended a Community Board 2 meeting to answer residents’ questions.
been an issue since the 1970s and wanted
to know how the agency could call it
an “unforeseen” event. Boozer told the
crowd that the city does not currently
have the capacity to house the dozens
of families looking for shelter every
night but did not address the community’s
notifi cation concerns.
“We’re in a situation now where we
don’t have enough purpose-built shelters
to house individuals so we may be aware
of the crisis but when we go to a community
and we ask them to build a shelter
we’re met with resistance and oft entimes
we cannot open the site,” Boozer
said. “When we cannot open the site, we
don’t have the vacancy rate that we need
on any given night to be able to place the
150 families sitting at PATH (Prevention
Assistance and Temporary Housing).”
Stephen Cooper, a board member,
asked the representatives when they
began speaking with the owner of the
Best Western to work out a deal to house
homeless families, but Boozer and Nasner
were unable to answer the question.
“Th at’s not information that we would
have in our unit,” Boozer said. “We go by
night-by-night capacity needs.”
According to a spokesperson for DHS,
the agreement to rent rooms at the Best
Western was “established” on Sept. 22
and elected offi cials and the community
board were notifi ed on Sept. 25.
In February, Mayor Bill de Blasio
announced his Turning the Tide plan,
which will phase out the use of cluster
apartments by 2021 and the use of commercial
hotels as shelters by 2023. Th e
administration said it would build 90 purpose
based shelters across the city so that
homeless families could stay in their communities
while they get back on their feet.
But residents argue that six years is
too long. In Woodside, the city made a
similar move in August 2016 when they
started moving homeless families into a
Quality Inn at 53-05 Queens Blvd. with
no notifi cation to the community.
A board member at the CB 2 meeting
also claimed that the City View Inn
at 33-17 Greenpoint Ave. in Long Island
City recently started housing homeless
families. Nasser said that Nolan had been
given 24 hours’ notice in that case.
Juan and Tatiana Lopez, who have lived
a block away from the Best Western on
38th Street for 14 years, said they have
seen a marked increase in trash around
their block, people loitering at late hours
and the smell of marijuana.
“We have three kids, 8, 10 and 16, all
boys, and we don’t want that infl uence on
them,” Tatiana Lopez said. “Th ey’re seeing
fi rsthand during the day, we’re smelling
it coming into our house.”
Th e couple also see people they don’t
recognize walking around their block
Photo by Angela Matua/QNS
later than the DHS curfew of 9 p.m.
“Usually the block is very quiet during
late hours but they’re talking about curfew
– we see people walking by at 11 p.m.,
midnight, even past midnight,” Tatiana
Lopez said. “We’re a very tight block. We
know each other. We know even family
that comes to visit so for us to see someone
it stands out.”
Juan Lopez said he felt that there was no
transparency during the meeting and that
the 24-hour notifi cation policy “is ridiculous.”
He would like DHS to phase out the
use of hotels within six months to a year.
“I have a brother that’s been in the system
and it’s very hard but he, two to three
months and he’s back on his feet, gets a
job and rents a room,” he said.
Denise Keenan-Smith, chairperson of
Community Board 2, suggested that DHS
come back and answer additional questions
for the board at a later meeting.
“We remain committed to continued
engagement with this community
and communities across the fi ve boroughs
as we implement our plan to fi nally
end the use of decades-old stop-gap
measures — including the 17-year-old
cluster program and use of commercial
hotels, which dates back to the Lindsay
Administration — and replace them with
a smaller number of more eff ective, borough
based shelters,” said Issac McGinn,
spokesperson for DHS.