Released From Jail, 100 Find Temporary Home In Queens Hotel

FRESH MEADOWS, QUEENS — A Fresh Meadows hotel has been housing more than 100 people recently released from Rikers Island, and local officials say the city never notified them.

For the last two months, the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice has paid for rooms at the Wyndham Hotel at 61-27 186th St. for individuals released from jail who had nowhere to live, according to City Council Members Barry Grodenchik and Rory Lancman.

The hotel room bookings are part of an emergency program to curb the spread of the new coronavirus by reducing overcrowding in the city's homeless shelters, where the virus can quickly spread.

Overseeing the facility is the nonprofit Exodus Transitional Community, which provides social services like job placement and housing and meal assistance. A private security firm is monitoring the building and the surrounding area, according to city officials.

The council members say they only found out about the arrangement after neighborhood residents started calling their offices with concerns.

"The failure to inform the community was a serious mistake," Grodenchik and Lancman said in a joint statement Thursday. "Standing with the local community, our position is that the facility must prevent negative security incidents both in the hotel and in the surrounding area, demonstrate success in placing residents in permanent housing, and establish a functioning community dialogue group."

Grodenchik and Lancman said that Exodus Transitional Community has since agreed to set up a community advisory board with local elected officials, community board representatives and civic leaders to address any issues that arise.

Thousands of people have signed on to a petition that calls the hotel an "improvised halfway house" that makes them feel unsafe in their community and argues it shouldn't be housing former inmates in the first place.

The petition's rhetoric echoes the backlash that's become a staple of the city's efforts to build new homeless shelters in neighborhoods like College Point and Glendale.

Colby Hamilton, a spokesperson for the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice, said setups like the one at Wyndham Hotel prevent people from ending up on the streets or in shelters.

“This and other hotels have provided an invaluable network of stable, reliable lodging for those in need, keeping people departing the jail system out of congregate housing, while we work with them to find more permanent living solutions going forward,” Hamilton told the Queens Daily Eagle, which first reported the news.