Locals Reject 'Inhumane' Homeless Shelter, Experts Call NIMBYism

DOUGLASTON, QUEENS — Residents of Douglaston recently woke up to find fliers in their mailboxes warning that an “inhumane” homeless shelter is coming to the neighborhood.

The 75-bed shelter will be the district's first when it opens later this year at 243-02 Northern Boulevard. It will house women over 50 in dorms of eight to 12, according to the Department of Social Services.

These sleeping arrangements — among other claims — loom large in an anti-shelter campaign run by the Douglaston Civic Association (DCA).

“This is nothing more than [a] money making scheme not a charitable outreach to help the homeless,” wrote the DCA in its recently distributed flier, which calls on residents to write letters to elected officials opposing the so-called "homeless warehouse" and to donate money to the DCA so that the group can hire lawyers to sue the city.

This isn’t the first time that the DCA has made plans to take the city to court, and it’s also not the first pushback in response to the planned shelter.

But at least one expert finds that the group's stated concerns over "inhumane" conditions at the shelter are disingenuous.

“People who oppose shelters in their neighborhoods run through the same script every time and it usually starts with a bogus expression of concern for the welfare of shelter residents,” said Joshua Goldfein, an attorney with the Legal Aid Society.

Eight months of pushback

Since plans were announced last December, neighbors have pushed back on the shelter in a now-familiar thread of what experts and advocates call not-in-my-backyard — or NIMBY — rhetoric that typically trails such proposals across New York City.

In a series of virtual public meetings hosted by Queens Community Board 11 earlier this year, residents argued, without citing evidence, that the shelter would increase crime and quality-of-life issues. "My wellbeing comes first, and this shelter will affect my wellbeing," said one neighbor.

Thousands of other residents signed a petition opposing the shelter, which describes the location as “concerning,” citing its proximity to an elementary school, and lack of area public transportation, despite nearby buses and a Long Island Rail Road station. In explaining their reasons for signing the petition, many signatories mention crime and safety concerns.

Another thread that’s come up in pushback to the shelter is the concern that its density could pose health and safety risks to residents — a central part of the argument in DCA’s most recent fliers.

“To take 75 human beings and shove them in barracks-like conditions and then tell them they have to leave during the day when there’s nothing [nearby] to do and you put them at the end of the city in terms of transportation; it’s inhumane,” said DCA president Sean Walsh.

Instead, the DCA would support a plan to build an apartment with 15 permanent residents for unhoused people, Walsh told Patch. The “nature of the [shelter’s] population” and its possible “negative effect on the surrounding houses,” however, is still a concern, he said.

COVID lawsuit

Walsh’s existing concerns about density are exacerbated by the spread of the highly transmissible delta variant, which is now the most dominant COVID-19 strain in New York City.

“COVID is coming back and there’s no requirements that they have to be vaccinated and they’re going to be one on top of each other,” he told Patch about shelter residents.

Walsh believes that the DCA’s concerns about COVID will aid their argument in court, similar to how a judge recently ruled against moving homeless people from hotels to congregate shelters after the Legal Aid Society filed a legal challenge against the city, citing health and access concerns with the move.

Goldfein, the staff lawyer for the Legal Aid Society, disagreed. He told Patch that the legal aid group opposed the hotel-to-shelter move earlier this month on the basis that it violates the rights of people with disabilities.

“Our claim is not that people need to stay in hotels our claim is that people need to be placed in a setting that is appropriate for their particular needs so the city needs to accommodate peoples' disabilities,” he said, noting that with the spread of the delta variant congregate living spaces could be unsafe for people with certain medical issues, like respiratory conditions, even though the city is legally required to provide adequate shelter for everybody.

“There may come a time, which we all hope, that the delta variant is under control, and then there might be less concern at that point,” said Goldfein.

While Goldfein agrees with Walsh that the ultimate solution for unhoused people is permanent housing, he is not convinced by the DCA’s efforts.

He said the DCA’s permanent housing proposal is “not persuasive" because people in Douglaston pushed back against having a shelter from the get-go.

“If these people were genuinely concerned about shelter residents they could advocate for the governor and mayor to put forward adequate permanent housing resources to relocate people to what they really need, which is a home,” Goldfein said, adding that people can put pressure on Mayor Bill de Blasio to implement a housing subsidy increase that the City Council passed earlier this year.

‘Every community is responsible’

The city and state’s top elected officials are not the only ones in the spotlight when it comes to homeless shelters.

When plans for the Douglaston shelter were first announced, opposition by district leaders — including City Council Member Paul Vallone, State Assembly Member Edward Braunstein, and State Senator John Liu — ultimately prompted the city to change course from a single men’s shelter to a senior women’s shelter.

In response to the newest claims that the shelter is “inhumane,” Liu told Patch in a written statement that the city “must make appropriate additional changes” if the “concerns about inhuman conditions are substantiated.” He added that “residents near proposed homeless shelters have raised concerns wherever shelters have been announced throughout the city.”

Vallone and Braunstein did not respond to Patch’s request for comment.

As they have said in the past, a DSS-DHS spokesperson told Patch that all city shelters must meet New York State capacity requirements, and provide adequate facilities for all residents — which the agency said is important to have in all five boroughs.

“This new high-quality facility will be the first traditional shelter in this Community District, offering 75 older women experiencing homelessness the opportunity to get back on their feet safely and closer to their anchors of life, like jobs, healthcare, family, and houses of worship,” a DSS-DHS spokesperson told Patch.

The spokesperson added that this approach of opening smaller shelters citywide, which is part of Mayor de Blasio's "Turning the Tide" plan, allows for unhoused people across the city to “get back on their feet closer to their support networks.”

Samaritan Village, a nonprofit that manages millions of dollars worth of city contracts, will run the shelter.

For his part, Walsh agrees that “every community is [responsible]” for addressing the citywide homelessness crisis, including neighbors in Douglaston.

“We didn’t have to come out with the position of trying to do something [like build permanent housing for homeless people] we could have just said ‘go away,’” Walsh said, adding that he thinks the DCA proposal for a smaller, permanent housing option comes from a place of care.

“In every community you have people that take a position for the right or wrong reasons, and I am sure there are some people that don’t care about the homeless and who just say ‘not in my backyard,’ but we have a lot of people who are concerned,” he said.

“I would say the overwhelming majority of people in the neighborhood want something constructive,” he said.