City changes plan for Briarwood homeless shelter
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A proposed shelter for 138-50 Queens Blvd., in Briarwood, will no longer house single adult males of all ages after City Councilmember James Gennaro reached a deal with the city to set an age restriction on the soon-to-be-opened shelter. Photo via Google Maps
By Jacob Kaye
Following months of outrage from a City Councilmember and a group of vocal Briarwood residents, a proposed homeless shelter for the neighborhood will now have an age restriction on the population it soon will serve.
The shelter, to be located at 138-50 Queens Blvd., in Briarwood and which is expected to open in the fall, will no longer house homeless adult men. Instead, it will only be available to men who are 55 years old or older, according to City Councilmember James Gennaro.
Calling the change a “major victory,” Gennaro said the compromise between his office and the city’s Department of Homeless Services was recently reached. The shelter was previously slated to house 175 adult males of all ages.
Gennaro, who, in addition to Briarwood, represents parts of Kew Gardens Hills, Pomonok, Electchester, Fresh Meadows, Hillcrest, Jamaica Estates, Parkway Village, Jamaica Hills and Jamaica in the City Council, blamed the previous iteration of the plan on former Mayor Bill de Blasio, who was in office when the shelter was first proposed.
“While I understand that this compromise will not please everyone – this shelter service provider has been under contract with the City since the de Blasio Administration,” Gennaro said. “This contract was entered into without the input of my office or the community.”
“Given the totality of the circumstances, the shelter for senior homeless men is a much better alternative for Briarwood,” he added.
The city’s Department of Homeless Services did not respond to the Eagle’s request for comment.
The shelter was first proposed to Queens Community Board 8 in the fall of 2020. The shelter, along with dozens of others, were the first of a number of proposed sites that aimed to mix both housing and social services, offering case management, permanent housing assistance, health services, workshops and employment counseling on site.
The programming at the proposed shelter in Briarwood will be provided by Westhab, a major social services provider in New York City. Their services were part of the plan prior to and after the change to its service population was made.
The shelter, which is currently a commercial office building, will be the first fully owned by Westhab, which also runs a shelter that saw community opposition in Glendale. The acquisition and renovation of the space was paid for with a $35.9 million loan through the Department of Homeless Services’ debt service funding model, according to Westhab.
The social services provider plans to build an affordable housing development adjacent to the shelter in the future, according to Westhab.
Mixing social services and housing under one roof reflects the change in the city’s shelter program, which was dubbed “Turning the Tide on Homelessness.” The program also included efforts to end the city’s use of cluster sites and commercial hotels to house people throughout the city.
Included in the shelter plan was an objective to spread shelters out throughout the city, bringing shelters to each community district throughout the five boroughs. Mayor Eric Adams, despite not proposing the plan, has endorsed it.
“Everyone must be in the game,” Adams said in July, according to reporting by THE CITY. “You cannot say, ‘House the homeless, let’s get them off the street — just don’t put them on my street.’ You can’t do that.”
Community Board 8 currently has one of the lowest number of shelter beds available in Queens. The only shelter in the district is a shelter for families located in Briarwood, according to reporting by THE CITY. The district currently has a little over 90 beds available for shelter. Only the neighboring Community Board 11, which covers Auburndale, Bayside and Douglaston, has fewer available beds – it has no shelters in the district.
In the years following the initial proposal for the shelter, a number of Briarwood residents have expressed their outrage over the proposed plan, mirroring concerns expressed in other parts of the borough.
Gennaro began rallying against the shelter before he was elected to his current seat last year.
During a rally in January 2021, Gennaro said that the shelter would “kill the potential of new development and vaporize untold millions in commercial and residential property values,” QNS reported.
In an online petition launched against the shelter by Gerald Caliendo, a Community Board 1 member and a member of the Concerned Citizens of Briarwood, residents argued that the previous iteration of the proposed shelter was located too close to a school, a number of apartment buildings and a shopping complex.
“We are not against providing shelters for homeless persons, we recognize that this is an extremely important need in this City and the Country,” the petition reads. “This need and the proposed location of a shelter should not destroy a neighborhood.”
Jacquelyn Simone, the policy director for Coalition for the Homeless, declined to comment on the specifics of the Briarwood shelter when contacted by the Eagle, but said that the city needs to ensure that it’s serving all homeless New Yorkers, regardless of age.
“The City must ensure that there is adequate shelter capacity, including private and accessible capacity, for all homeless New Yorkers,” Simone said. “Particularly at a time of increasing homelessness, we encourage all community members to treat their homeless neighbors with compassion.”
The new shelter will have an 11 p.m. curfew for residents and will have on-site security operating at all hours of the day, every day of the week.
The number of beds – 175 – will not change under the new agreement and beds will be prioritized for residents of Gennero’s council district.
In addition, a special advisory board will be launched and “meet regularly with shelter staff and DHS to discuss community concerns,” Gennaro’s office said.
“I am confident that, under the careful strict and watchful eyes of the service provider, Westhab, this shelter will be a considerate neighbor all while helping the City’s most vulnerable population,” Gennaro said.
A town hall on the shelter will be hosted by Gennaro, DHS and the Adams Administration on Thursday, Sept. 8, at 6:30 p.m.
Limited to 100 people, residents can RSVP by calling Gennaro’s office at 718-217-4969.
