'Billionaires Row' Shelter Fight Will Follow De Blasio To Iowa

NEW YORK — Call it an anti-campaign ad. A fight over a homeless shelter on a ritzy Manhattan block will follow to Mayor Bill de Blasio to Iowa as opponents of the plans put up billboards there.

Residents of Midtown's "Billionaires Row" plan to spend more than $100,000 on billboards in the Hawkeye State imploring the Democratic mayor to tend to pressing issues back home while he's on the campaign trail.

"Hey, Bill de Blasio! It's New York...Remember us?" the ad reads. "What are you doing in Iowa? Come back to New York and meet with us!"

The ad featuring an image of de Blasio in front of a corn field is signed, "From the residents on Billionaires Row."

The billboards will be erected in the cities of Cedar Rapids and Des Moines, where the mayor has traveled on his longshot presidential campaign, according to a press release from the West 58th Street Coalition.

The group of locals has sued the city over its plans for a 140-bed homeless shelter in the shuttered Park Savoy Hotel on West 58th Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues. A state judge ruled in April against the coalition, which argued that the building is unsafe for occupancy and that the area is over-saturated with shelters.

"The residents have reached out to the Mayor for a meeting about the shelter but have been ignored," the coalition's release says. "They hope the giant billboards will bring the Mayor back to the Big Apple."

Homelessness has dogged de Blasio throughout his tenure as mayor despite his administration's efforts to subsidize more housing and build homeless shelters. The population of the city's shelters hit a record 63,839 in January, according to a report from the Coalition for the Homeless, an advocacy group.

The Midtown shelter is one of 90 that the city has sought to open under de Blasio's "Turning the Tide" plan. The strategy aims to keep homeless people in their home boroughs so they can be closer to jobs and support systems while they look for permanent housing, city officials have said.