Planned Hell's Kitchen Shelter Met With Skepticism By Board

HELL'S KITCHEN, NY — The city's plan to open a new drop-in shelter in the heart of Hell's Kitchen was met with pushback from community board members, who said the area in question is already over-saturated with services for vulnerable people.

The city's proposal calls for a shelter at 771 Ninth Ave., a now-empty four-story building near the corner of West 52nd Street that was most recently home to a Janovic Plaza paint store. It would be a low-threshold shelter, the type of facility also known as a safe haven, which prioritizes getting people off the streets and into a bed.

Housing up to 90 people, the shelter would be staffed 24/7 by about 33 employees from Urban Pathways, representatives told a Community Board 4 committee during a presentation on Thursday. Speakers said the facility would connect homeless people to medical care, mental health supports and case management to help them search for a permanent home.

"This is an area where we see individuals experiencing street homelessness that would be well-served by a location in this particular geography," said Erin Drinkwater, a deputy commissioner at the city's Department of Social Services. She described groups of homeless people who congregate on 59th Street near the West Side Highway and on 57th Street between Broadway and Seventh Avenue as possible clients who could be brought off the streets by the Ninth Avenue shelter.

But members of Community Board 4 reacted negatively to the proposal, reiterating a complaint that Hell's Kitchen residents have raised for months: that the neighborhood hosts a disproportionate amount of supportive housing, leading to drug use and violence on nearby streets.

"This location is the problem, not the use," said committee co-chair Joe Restuccia, stressing that a drop-in shelter could be welcome in another part of the neighborhood. That stretch of the West Fifties is already inundated, he argued, citing three other shelters that already operate on 51st and 52nd streets.

Largely absent from the discussion, however, was any concrete suggestion of a better location for the shelter — though some members said it should be situated on a more commercial strip. The city conceded that the location was chosen partly out of necessity, as a vacant storefront with a landlord willing to cooperate.

"We are ... players in the New York City real estate market," said Molly Park, first deputy commissioner for the Department of Homeless Services.

Speakers from Urban Pathways stressed that their nonprofit already operates nearly two dozen shelters across the city, including a similar safe haven shelter at the Traveler's Hotel on West 40th Street.

In addition to social services, the Ninth Avenue shelter would provide bathrooms, showers, freshly-cooked meals, clothing and laundry to clients. Rather than attracting people from elsewhere in the city, the shelter would mostly house clients already in the neighborhood, speakers said.

Most board members appeared unmoved by the presentation, saying they admired the idea but would push to move it elsewhere.

Board member Sabrina Reveron expressed more openness, saying she thought the model "could work" for the homeless people she encounters each day.

"OK, it doesn’t work on this block because A-B-C-D, but where else can we offer a solution?" Reveron said. "We know that homelessness in our district is bad."

Related Hell's Kitchen coverage:

• Hell's Kitchen Hotel Residents Protest Move Back To Shelters
• City To Move Hell's Kitchen Shelter After Neighborhood Pushback
• Another Shelter Battle Brews In Hell's Kitchen As New Group Forms
• Hell's Kitchen Board Implores City To Reduce Hotel Shelters