Anti-homeless protest planned outside Fresh Meadows shelter-hotel
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The Wyndham Garden hotel in Fresh Meadows. Photo via Google Maps
By David Brand
A group of northeast Queens residents plan to protest Thursday outside a Fresh Meadows hotel used by the city to house people experiencing homelessness after their release from Rikers Island jails.
An online petition opposing the shelter has received more than 9,000 signatures and advertises the upcoming protest outside the Wyndham Garden hotel on 186th Street. The gathering was originally scheduled for Tuesday, but postponed by organizers due to high winds and torrential rain pouring down on Queens.
“You've worked hard to make your American dream of home ownership come true. You've made sacrifices, paid your taxes and played by the rules,” wrote Carlos Tsapelas, a Flushing Meadows resident who created the petition. “Now without so much as a word, the NYC elected officials you helped to put into office have decided to use hotels in your community as halfway houses for ex-convicts and sex offenders.”
Queens leaders say they were unaware of the plan to house people experiencing homelessness in the hotel. They wrote a letter to Mayor Bill de Blasio, shared with the Eagle, questioning how long people released from Rikers Island would stay at the facility.
Colby Hamilton, a spokesperson for the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, said the city faced a “dire public healthcare crisis” that demanded the use of some hotels to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in shelters as people are released from Rikers Island after completing their sentences.
“The city stood up a number of hotels across the city on an emergency basis to safely house the relatively small population that otherwise would have entered the shelter system, or simply returned to those communities already most impacted by COVID-19,” Hamilton said.
The hotel contract ends in October, but could be extended based on the state of the COVID-19 crisis, the city said. The organization Exodus Transitional Services provides on-site case management and social services.
A protest flyer shared on Facebook. The protest has been rescheduled for Thursday.
Former Assembly candidate Kenneth Chiu is listed as the main protest organizer but did not respond to multiple phone calls seeking comment.
“We want them out now,” reads a protest flyer circulated on Facebook, which claims convicted murderers and rapists could be housed in the hotel.
Convicted murderers and rapists are not detained in city jails except while awaiting sentencing and were not released during the COVID-19 crisis.
Other local residents have been critical of the protest, which they say targets vulnerable individuals staying in the hotel.
“The protest is rescheduled for tomorrow so that the protestors can stay safe, in their homes, during the storm,” community activist Erica Manney tweeted Tuesday. “Safe in their homes. Because its a storm. And a pandemic. And when its safe to do so, they will come protest people being provided shelter.”
The protest would be the latest in a series of anti-shelter actions in Queens in recent years, with the gatherings often eliciting discriminatory and hateful comments from attendees.
