NYC leaders urge mayor to reverse LIC shelter reshuffling plan
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Public Advocate Jumaane Williams (pictured) and Comptroller Scott Stringer joined the chorus of leaders and advocates urging the mayor not to move homeless women from a hotel in Long Island City. Photo by Emil Cohen/City Council Photography
By David Brand
Two of New York City’s three citywide elected officials have called on Mayor Bill de Blasio to reverse a shelter-hotel reshuffling plan that has threatened to displace homeless families in at least three boroughs.
Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and Comptroller Scott Stringer, a candidate for mayor, joined the chorus of lawmakers and homeless advocates urging de Blasio not to move women from a hotel in Long Island City Friday. The plan, announced Sept. 8, would in turn compel the Department of Homeless Services to eject families from a shelter in Brooklyn’s Flatlands neighborhood.
“We are at a pivotal moment that demands leadership from our public officials,” Stringer said. “The city should be making decisions based on sound housing policy and public health policy, and doing the work to engage communities about the impacts of those decisions.”
“The Mayor's decisions are affecting real people, with real lives, not pieces on a board to be moved around,” Williams added.
Both officials have slammed de Blasio for initiating a displacement domino effect through the sprawling shelter system in response to complaints from wealthy residents of the Upper West Side, whose gripes about perceived quality of life issues near a hotel being used to house homeless men generated weeks of negative tabloid coverage and fueled a lawsuit against the city.
On Sept. 8, De Blasio announced that the city would move 300 homeless men out of the Upper West Side hotel, the Lucerne. The decision drew immediate criticism from advocates, as well as residents of other communities who say their complaints and concerns have fallen on deaf ears while wealthy Manhattanites get their way. Many of the Lucerne residents were first housed at a hotel in Hell’s Kitchen until Council Speaker Corey Johnson’s office intervened, fueling further criticism about the influence of rich Manhattan residents.
De Blasio disputed this notion, pointing to his decision to also shift women from a hotel near the Queensbridge Houses in response to residents’ complaints. The city targeted the Long Island City Plaza Hotel, which houses a few dozen women and is located five blocks from the Queensbridge Houses — further than several other hotels used to house homeless New Yorkers.
Residents of the Queensbridge Houses and Councilmember Jimmy Van Bramer said the mayor was exploiting the public housing tenants to deflect criticism that he only responded to the complaints of wealthy, predominantly white constituents on the Upper West Side.
“He caved to rich, angry white people on the Upper West Side and then used Queensbridge as cover,” Van Bramer told the Eagle Sept. 14. “It was shameless.”
The roughly 65 women staying in the LIC Plaza Hotel were set to move to a Flatlands shelter, forcing the eviction of the current occupants — 90 families with children. DHS and the city’s law department announced they were temporarily halting the Lucerne and LIC Plaza Hotel reshuffling on Sept. 14.
The moves are currently under review, according to DHS
The Long Island City Plaza Hotel houses about 65 women experiencing homelessness and has become a flashpoint in the debate over the city’s shelter-hotel reshuffling plan. Photo via Google Maps
The Coalition for the Homeless organized a group of leaders and homeless service providers to call on the city to forgo the plan to displace residents of the LIC Plaza Hotel, the Lucerne, the Flatlands family shelter and another location, the Harmonia, which was being cleared to make way for Lucerne residents.
The mayor, said Coalition for the Homeless Executive Director Dave Giffen, “has made life far more difficult for hundreds of homeless families and individuals struggling to survive this pandemic, and in the process created a tremendously dangerous precedent by empowering NIMBYist activism for years to come.”
The city began moving thousands of homeless individuals out of barracks-style shelters, where residents typically sleep in shared spaces, and into two-bed hotel rooms to stop the spread of COVID-19. The move earned praise from advocates and public health experts.
De Blasio said city plans to return the homeless adults back to the traditional shelter system, though DHS has not established a firm timeframe.
