Homeless Shelter Plan For Brownstone Brooklyn Will Be Subject Of Community Meeting

CARROLL GARDENS, BROOKLYN — City officials will give a presentation later this month on Mayor Bill de Blasio's plan to open 90 new homeless shelters over the next five years and what it means for Brownstone Brooklyn.

Community Board 6 — which covers Red Hook and the Columbia Waterfront through Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, Gowanus and Park Slope — will host the meeting on Wednesday, June 28, at P.S. 58.

CB6 describes the meeting as a "Presentation and informational session with members of the NYC Department of Social Services and Council Member Brad Lander, to discuss Mayor Bill de Blasio’s 'Turning the Tide on Homelessness in New York City' and the role our community will play in future citing of shelters."

Isaac McGinn, a spokesman for the Department of Social Services, told Patch in an emailed statement that CB6 "took us up on our invitation to all communities to help us identify viable sites for borough-based shelters that our providers can propose" through an open process.

"We look forward to continuing our conversation with the community about our shelter siting process and how they can help us best serve our homeless neighbors and meet our equitable siting goals," McGinn said. "We encourage other communities to similarly join us at the table."

Officials in this area are hoping to avoid a repeat of what happened across Prospect Park, where some Crown Heights residents went into a fury over shelters that were announced in their neighborhood.

Several emotional public meetings were held where people railed that the shelters locations were announced in the dead of night with little notice. Lawsuits were filed trying to stop the city from opening them on the grounds that their neighborhood already had too many shelters, especially compared to the mayor's home neighborhood of Park Slope.

Those two shelters were part of the first group of five locations that were announced under the mayor's plan. The other three have opened without incident, two in the Bronx and one in Prospect Heights.

"We should be proactive and learn more about the homelessness plan and think about whether it’s possible for the community, the community board, the elected officials, people in the neighborhood, to work proactively with them to think about how that would work, rather than wait for them in the more traditional way to come with a location and relatively short notice," Lander told Patch last month.

READ MORE: Homeless Shelter Plan For Park Slope-Area Should Be 'Proactive,' Councilman Says

Image: Patch file photo