For years, in this space, we’ve warned that homelessness is a crisis, a very real epidemic that has negatively affected our city in innumerable ways. And it seems that Mayor Bill de Blasio and the Department of Homeless Services have proposed a plan for sheltering our way out of the problem.
The shelters that are proposed under de Blasio’s answer to the homeless crisis are bound to be poorly planned and ill-informed failures. Though the plan is to place these homeless shelters all over the five boroughs, let’s take a few minutes to explore those that are intended for the Rockaways and Staten Island. Let’s seek to understand the intentions and determine who will benefit from these structures.
The homeless shelter set to be built in Rockaway Park is intended for 120 single men. While there is no doubt that there is a homeless crisis, will this shelter solve the problem or exacerbate it? While the plan has set forth a place and who will reside there, the plan fails to consider what else is needed for this to be successful.
The residents in the community assert that they are already overburdened. The shelter plan fails to consider that this community has yet to recover from the effects of 2012’s Superstorm Sandy and there is already an existing unresolved crisis. Some people have yet to move back into their homes, business doors have yet to re-open and there is already a high unemployment rate. Placing a homeless shelter in Rockaway Park would further inundate a community that is still rebuilding and has limited resources to support the men who would reside in the facility.
The shelter that is poised to be built in the heart of Tompkinsville, Staten Island, is another setting in which such a facility is poorly planned and would only embed one crisis within a larger crisis. Historically, this area of Staten Island has struggled with crime rates and financial burdens. The shelter that is proposed for this area will house mostly women and children that have become homeless while living on Staten Island. The intention here is to keep the residents close to their families and for children to remain in their current zone schools. However, when Hizzoner is asked about the population, he has asserted that he is unsure if the shelter is limited to women and children and the City has yet to propose a way to prove that the residents will in fact be from Staten Island.
Furthermore, the decisions around building this shelter have excluded considerations and input from elected officials who would be able to speak to the level of negative impact the shelter would have on the community. Regardless of opposition, he does not have the right to proceed without collaboration with and consultation of the communities.
In the current plan, the homeless people are going to benefit less than those who will be making money on the building these shelters. The City overpays the landlords to outbid anyone else so they can access the property they desire. The developers, who own the land, make an obscene amount of money on the deal because they would never make that consistent amount of revenue stream on a 30-year lease on rentals.
The reality is that while many oppose these homeless shelters, very few would oppose finding the right solution to the problem. The goal should be to develop a plan that fosters the support and success of those we set out to help: the homeless. And in order to truly support the homeless, it is imperative that we develop a plan that would incorporate mandates and services; that would provide the residents with more resources, training and employment; moreover, that we develop a plan that would foster a system that can provide permanent affordable housing, rather than this proposed band-aid, which, over time would simply place one crisis inside another crisis and create a much larger problem.
