UWS NIMBYism and Shelter Residents

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Brian Lehrer: Thank you, Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Manhattan's Upper West Side has a reputation as a lefty liberal bastion full of birders and Birkenstocks, the stereotype goes. Yes, it's far more well healed now than when that image developed, but still supposedly more tolerant in various ways than say the upper East side which is probably why the organized and sometimes loud pushback against the use of a hotel in the neighborhood to house a group of homeless men during the pandemic has gotten so much attention, but those opponents did get the mayor support. He announced the man staying at the Lucerne hotel on 79th and Amsterdam would be relocated to another shelter on West 31st street after the cries of some serious quality of life problems in the neighborhood that these men who had certain problems were causing, they said, but the residents on West 31st street many of whom are disabled would now have to move to a hotel in Long Island city. Those dominoes falling is when legal aid got involved and threatened to sue the city on behalf of those residents. Relocations have temporarily halted and negotiations are underway so it remains unresolved and in discussion. With us to talk about the situation at the Lucerne and the relocation process this morning, I'm joined by two opponents of the plan to move them again. Josh Goldfein is a Staff Attorney and Legal AID's Homeless Project. We also have city councilmember Helen Rosenthal who's upper West Side district includes the Lucerne hotel. Listeners we can take a few phone calls from people on any side of this. If you live in the neighborhood including if you are living in the Lucerne hotel right now or are a neighbor of it with whatever opinion or question or experience call and weigh in on this whole saga. The immediate details and even bigger picture questions about what it's shown you about your neighborhood and what you hope the outcome of negotiations in this whole mess will be. 646-435-7280 is our phone number. 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280. You can tweet your comment or question @BrianLehrer. Joshua Goldfein from Legal Aid council member Helen Rosenthal. Thanks for coming on today. Josh Goldfein let's start with explaining why these sudden movements of shelter residents a little background where had the man at the Lucerne been living and with what support?

Joshua Goldfein: Thanks for having us, Brian. The men at the Lucerne had been living in a shelter along with the women in the Long Island City Hotel, were also living in a shelter. It's important to keep in mind that we're talking about the Lucerne, there are two hotels that have people from shelters in them that would be moved, and that would displace people at two other shelters. We're really talking about four sites at once here where this would be happening. The effects of what the mayor is talking about. These folks were living in shelters in congregate shelters which means that they were sharing a room with-- Could be two or three. It could be eight it could be 20. At one site they were even dozens of people who were sharing a room. Obviously, at a time of a pandemic that's not a safe space for anybody. It's also not a safe space for New Yorkers in general because any place where the virus can be communicated to lots of people creates a hotspot. There are workers in those shelters, the residents of their shelters go to work themselves. Many of them are employed. It wasn't just a concern for the people who were residents of those particular shelters. It's really a concern for the health of everyone in New York. To deal with that issue the city moved people from shelters where they would not be safe into hotels where they could have the opportunity to socially distance appropriately and it didn't have to be hotels. The city could have moved them anywhere that they could have some separate space, but it's so happens that we had 100,000 empty hotel rooms in New York City because there was no tourism.

Brian: Councilmember Rosenthal, the Lucerne was as I understand it the third hotel in your district to be used to shelter residents who had needed to be relocated because of the pandemic why did the Lucerne cause such an uproar?

Helen Rosenthal: That's a great question. I appreciate you having us on, Brian. A lot of people are thinking about that. It's a great question the move was on July 27th, perhaps because it was in the heat of summer. We have seen many more street homeless around. What happened is that pretty quickly after the move our office got many letters and phone calls, complaints about what people were seeing on the streets. These were very legitimate complaints about aggressive behavior and real quality of life concerns. That's why from day one we have worked so hard with the shelter providers to address those concerns. I would say after about week two or three many of those concerns had gone away. For example, the health provider at the Lucerne is Project Renewal and they enforced a strict "Good neighbor policy" which meant that if you display aggressive behavior on the street or in the shelter you would lose the privilege of living there. At this juncture, the resident population at the Lucerne has gone down from 283 residents, down to 240. DHS is not putting people back in there. The Project Renewal folks are saying that they think this is a manageable number of people. Part of the problem has been a disconnect between what were at first very legitimate concerns but those are now dated. Those were legitimate concerns in the first couple of weeks since then there have been others in the community who have done remarkable things. They've donated to Project Renewal and the other shelter providers. Some of the community have raised a quarter-million dollars to provide additional space and day programming for the clients of the Lucerne. Most recently what we're seeing is much more calm on the street. Look there are isolated incidents no doubt, but it's nothing like what it was the first two weeks. That's why when the mayor made the decision to move people out of the Lucerne, my goodness, that was the day before the new programming was starting and it just felt like the rug was being pulled out from under us. We had taken drug dealers off the streets. We had moved aggressive behavior out of the shelters. All of that good work that a community does coming together, where now ultimately the emails I'm getting and the phone calls are, "Please don't. Why are these people leaving? Don't let them take them out. We welcome them". Those are the prevailing calls and emails I get now.

Brian: Before we start taking some of our many phone callers from the neighborhood who have various points of view about this, councilmember you initially cited with the group Upper West Siders for Safer Streets, a Facebook group that strongly opposed the move into the Lucerne hotel. Now you're demonstrating at Gracie Mansion with those who oppose moving the residents out prematurely. What changed your view? Some people are thinking you just heard more political pressure from the other side and you cave to it and flipped.

Helen: That's an interesting question. I believe it's a reflection of the fact that I'm listening to my community. As I say, the first couple of weeks were really rough. I wrote in the email that the Upper West Side would not tolerate any more shelter providers, but I regret that email, and I made that very clear in the next email that I sent out. That I regret having taken that position. Now I think I see more clearly, I think my moral compass was clouded by the initial response. You have to understand I've spoken with nearly 50 Upper West Siders and these conversations are longer than an hour each one. I've picked up the phone, responded to these virulent emails and messages, and spoken to people. By the end of the call, more often than not they're saying to me, "Now I understand what's going on. I don't like it, I don't like that these people are here but I understand now what you're doing to address the quality of life issues and I'm comfortable with that."

Brian: Well, I mentioned that we're inviting phone calls from people who live in the neighborhood either in the Lucerne or neighbors of the Lucerne, and let's take a call that we're getting from a resident of the hotel. I believe this caller is calling in as the Homeless hero. Homeless Hero you're on WNYC, thank you so much for calling in.

Homeless Hero: How's everything? I'm at the Lucerne, I'm in my room right now and I'm ready to speak on some of these things that you were discussing.

Brian: What would you like to say?

Homeless Hero: I'd like to thank you all for having me.

Brian: Sure.

Homeless Hero: Well, one I wanted to say that one of the problems was that we were moved here quickly and I don't think that to the community was informed in enough time to including the local leaders to be able to provide the services or the support that exists in the community already to combat any of the potential problems that end up coming to the Upper West Side. Some of those same issues I started to see at the previous hotel we were at. When I knew that we were coming to this community which I've lived in previously for three years, I knew that there would be some type of problem. As far as the quality of life issues, one of the things that needed to be done and has been done since is that there had to be a filtering process which some people who because of their substance use issues and mental health issues, might need a higher level of care. Like you know, every residence gets a cycle socials and they have some type of documentation of their history in terms of whatever their struggles or issues are and everyone varies. In this type of community, of course, this is a health matter, this is a situation that happened as a result of COVID, so things are happening on the fly so you could expect some mistakes. I think that that was going to cause a little problem for the first two weeks. I know most of the residents that come from Project Renewal shelters, so I know those that have some issues that might need a lot higher-level care. I know those who were stuck in the medium and not understanding where to go or what to do and stuff like that, and they were exhibiting behavior that they normally would because certain services were not in place, to begin with. What I did was I definitely made my voice known in order to try and bring about some type of services that would help, and the same thing it was happening as far as from community supporters and also from the local leaders as well as the [unintelligible 00:13:47] president's office. What we did was we end upbringing in our Project Renewal Recovery Center, which is the outpatient group that is situated at third street. Instead of them being there and us having to go there, they came here and opened up their services for everybody whoever would like to attend. You don't have to be a member of the outpatient group, but they were providing services here. Well, they're still doing it in the penthouse of the hotel which has been very [crosstalk]

Brian: Let me ask you a bigger picture question. How do you feel-- Since we're talking about a population as I understand it that has more than the usual concentration for people in homeless shelters of guys with substance abuse or mental health problems in their present or in their past? How do you feel the city services are in general which would be in everybody's interest to get right, both in the interest of those people who are receiving the services and in the interest of whatever neighbors of people receiving those services who don't want the worst behaviors that are sometimes associated with those conditions? How's the city doing in your opinion?

Homeless Hero: Well, the city itself has made a tremendous mistake as with so many different things that are going on with this administration's rendering of services. To me, I believe that a lot has to be reformed especially in the area of homelessness and dealing with a population that deals with substance use disorder and mental health issues. This has been going on for many, many years and it's only increasing as time goes by. Unfortunately, in the era of COVID, it makes it even worse. We have to do more to address the substance use issues that many people have, especially residing in shelters when you're in a situation that we are not able to have the type of housing that would support us during our struggles. The shelters are not for the most part not able to support us in those situations. No matter what neighborhood we're in whether in hotels or in shelters, we still need supportive services and that's probably one of the biggest things. [crosstalk]

Brian: Just I identify you accurately, you are currently a resident of the Lucerne and you also work or you're a client with Project Renewal which you named?

Homeless Hero: Okay, I'm the Homeless Hero and I am a resident of the Lucerne under Project Renewal and I'm also a client of Project Renewal Recovery Center in the outpatient group.

Brian: Thank you so much for calling us and lending your voice to this conversation today. I'm going to go right on to another caller, Holly on the Upper West Side. You're on WNYC. Holly thank you so much for calling in.

Holly: Thank you, Brian. I want to clarify something that Helen Rosenthal said. We did have, as you correctly noted, over 900 Homeless people moved into three hotels in a 10 block area of the Upper West Side over a period of two to three weeks in the month of July. Helen says that those activities associated with the Lucerne were only the first couple of weeks. Why is it that then over the past two weeks we have had over 30 narcotics arrests, we've got drug dealers in open air on 72nd street, 79th street? The impact of the neighborhood is what we're objecting to. We don't object to the fact that Homeless people need to be safely housed, but to take that concentration into a residential neighborhood, 900 people in three locations in 10 blocks with no services-- I understand that now a month and a half later maybe those services are going to be provided, but what came with them was heavy-duty drug dealing, prostitution on the streets, multiple documented instances of crimes both of quality of life as real crimes, knifepoint attacks of people on the 72nd street subway station, while they're trying to fill a MetroCard. Those things were not happening before this relocation began, and it's incredibly disingenuous of our representative to characterize it as only a two-week problem, given that it continues to happen.

Brian: Councilmember, talk to Holly. Your constituents.

Helen: Holly, thanks for calling in. I really appreciate you bringing up these issues and I appreciate your concerns. Very quickly because I know we don't have a lot of time and I'm happy to talk to you, you can call my office and we'll schedule time to talk more. Let's take what you're talking about here. Number one, the narcotics arrest. Those happened about three weeks ago, and they took people off the street and there were shelter clients who were arrested, and those people have lost the privilege of living at the Lucerne. When I say that there have been responses to the very legitimate concerns, you've articulated it exactly there has been a response to legitimate concerns, those people are off the street now. As for the knifing which was just a horrible, horrible incident at the 72nd street subway station, that gentleman has no connection to anything on the Upper West Side. He got on on the subway, I think he started following this woman at 42nd street and she got off at 72nd. I can't give you more details about that person, but he's not affiliated with any street or shelter homeless people on the Upper West Side, same with the individual who very, unfortunately, sucker-punched an outdoor diner. That was somebody who was from a Queens homeless shelter who was up here on the Upper West Side panhandling. Again, we have to be very careful about identifying who is street homeless and who is shelter homeless. When I say that we've addressed the concerns, I think it's very powerful. What I would ask you to be just a little bit patient about is the fact that the shelter population at Lucerne has been reduced by over 40 people. Those are the bad apples and where usually people are-- DHS would send people in to replace them. DHS has acknowledged that the shelter population there is too big and that's why they're not replacing people who are moving out. Frankly, let me just say that to be clear when I say bad apples, what I mean is they need additional services to the services that they were getting at the Lucerne. It is disingenuous to say people are getting no services at the Lucerne. They are getting the exact same services they got when they were at their original congregate shelter. The entire service provider's staff has moved up to the Lucerne and is with them. Now, are there people placed there who need additional services? Yes. That's why those people have been moved out, but if I could just go for a moment to the homeless hero's point of view, which is that the city has a homeless problem and it is only going to get worse because of budget deficits, because of the impending lifting of the eviction moratorium. Now is not the time to cut funding to the safety net provider, something that was already done in the city's last budget, and it's being likely proposed in the next budget. We'll have an unprecedented homeless problem. What the city needs to do now is provide housing affordable, supportive services for the people who need to be in off the streets.

Brian: Let me give Holly a quick response to that because Holly, I'm curious, the councilmember convinced you to her point of view to any degree, but I also want to do the illegal ID that we needed to do at the top of the hour. This is WNYC FM HDNA in New York, WNGT FM 88.1 Trenton, WNJP 88.5 Sussex, WNJY 89.3 Netcom, WNJO 90.3 Toms River. We are in New York and New Jersey public radio. As we have a few more minutes to talk about the Homeless Hotel situation on the Upper West Side and the larger implications and context of that. Holly, did the council member convinced you to anything?

Holly: No, she didn't because the reduction of 40 people out of 900, if you can do the math leaves us with 860, she didn't address the issues with the Bell Claire or the other hotel that is also occupied and all the quality of life issues that are going on with those. The reason we were so happy with the mayor's announcement to remove the residence of The Lucerne was not specific to necessarily loop The Lucerne. It was specifically oriented around the issue of decreasing the density of the impact of the quality of life issues in the area that had been brought in by the relocation of these residents.

Brian: Thank you very much, Josh Goldfein, I'm going to give you a last word here in just a second, but I want to take one more caller because Rebecca in Manhattan, I think is calling in to reflect how divisive this has become among permanent residents of the neighborhood. Rebecca, you're on WNYC. Hi.

Rebecca: Hi. Oh my God, this is incredible at eleven o'clock, which it is now I'm supposed to have a session with my shrink, but this is very important. Yes, I did lose two friendships over this issue. I do not want to sound like a progressive Pollyanna, which I may be, but I've lived a little bit further uptown and around the corner from me, there are three so-called SROs. Yes, sometimes there are some odd people, not well dressed, stumbling around perhaps on medication that I'm presuming might've been prescribed for them, but friends of mine who have said they would be afraid, they're afraid for the lives of their grandchildren. I am of that age. I find that shocking in New York City. I don't know if there's an unfair number of such situations on the West Side compared to the East Side, I don't know.

Brian: Are you saying the fear for their grandchildren is a matter of perception not reality?

Rebecca: In my entire 72, almost 73 years I've never heard of a child being killed by a homeless person or a person in an SRO. I just have never heard of such a thing. There probably are such. I don't know, I think we're overreacting. We're very emotionally wound up right now. I hope blend after November 3rd, but I am surprised and disappointed, which is in my right. I shouldn't be judgmental, but I am at people who say they're afraid for the lives. Again, the progressive Pollyanna, if a child see some buddy from such a place who's being housed and who clearly is different from the world they come from, I don't think that's such a terrible experience for a person to have, but I'm sure there are many people who don't agree with me.

Brian: Friendships wrecked over this. Rebecca, tell your shrink that I said that because this was very therapeutic, probably for a lot of listeners, not just you, that these five minutes should not be charged to your session time.

Rebecca: Okay. Thanks a lot. I love your show. Okay, bye-bye.

Brian: Thank you very much Joshua Goldfein from Legal Aid, where does this go from here? Because it's all on hold now, and of course, there's every other neighborhood that doesn't get into the press as much when the same people or how's there, I know the mayor was asked last night on New York One about people who would be moved to Long Island City and why isn't Long Island city in the news, in the same way, every single day? How do you see what happens next since this is still a matter of negotiation and that would be fair to the people involved, the residents of the shelters or hotels, and the neighbors?

Joshua: Part of the mayor's plan involves transferring a shelter full of families who have children right now in Brooklyn just as school is going to begin. There's a lot of absurdity if you go around in this response that the mayor has come up with to try to deal with these concerns, but if people are upset that there's so many people in shelters, we should all be upset about that. The mayor has a plan, which assumes that there will be tens of thousands of people in shelter, in perpetuity. He does not have a plan to rehouse people. Last night for the first time ever, we had more than 18,000 people in the single adult shelter system. Why is that? Because the mayor has failed to provide enough affordable housing opportunities for people who are in shelter. We talk about services, but about a third of the people in the shelter system are working. Maybe half are disabled. I would ask people to think about what's really more important, services may help the small group of people who are in need of additional help, but really what people need is housing that they can afford. They'll move out of shelter and we won't be having these conversations about where should shelters be sided or there are too many shelters in my neighborhood. People will be back in housing where they belong and can get on with their lives.

Brian: Josh Goldfein is a staff attorney in Legal Aid's Homeless Rights Project and city council member, Helen Rosenthal represents the Upper West Side, including the Lucerne hotel. Thank you both.

 

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