Park Slope Homeless Shelters Could Cost $89M More Than Elsewhere

PARK SLOPE, BROOKLYN — A group advocating against two new homeless shelters planned for Park Slope have found that the city is likely to spend at least $89 million more on the facilities than on other Brooklyn shelters run by the same nonprofit.

Fourth Avenue Neighbors, which has been organizing against the 535 and 555 Fourth Ave. family shelters, recently compared the city's projected costs for the developments with the contracts at two facilities on Junius Street in East New York that are run by the same organization, Women In Need (WIN).

The analysis, which was first reported by Gothamist, found that even aside from the group's concerns about inflated rent costs, the Department of Homeless Services is budgeting twice as much for services at the Fourth Avenue shelters than those on Junius Street.

"The cost of the shelter is obscene," Fourth Avenue neighbors has said about the contracts. "Even if you incorporate the cost of services provided, these contracts represent (millions) of waste and potential corruption."

The costs outlined in the $147 and $114 million contracts for the two developments are still in draft form and the department has said they are intentionally projected significantly higher than what will likely be the final costs.

The city is confident, the department said, that they can bring the costs in line with those at the Junius Street facilities when negotiations are completed.

But the department did not immediately have information available about why these contingency costs have made the Fourth Avenue projections twice as big, rather than only slightly larger, than those at Junius Street.

Fourth Avenue Neighbors' analysis, which Patch fact-checked, found that the cost of services aside from rent for the 253 units of housing at the two shelters will cost more than $6,000 per unit, per month. At the Junius Street shelters, these services — which include everything from staff, to counseling, to security — cost just under $3,000 per unit, per month.

WIN has told Patch that services at the Junius Street shelters and Fourth Avenue shelters will be consistent. They referred Patch's other questions about the costs to DHS.

These numbers, Fourth Avenue Neighbors argues, are also at the low end of estimating the "padded cost" that has been put in the contracts.

The extra $89 million uses DHS's estimate of spending $3,667 at the 555 Fourth Ave. and $3,500 at the 535 Fourth Ave. shelter per month, per unit in rent costs. Fourth Avenue neighbors has contended that the rent should actually be much lower.

The group contends that in a typical residential unit, things like building security, maintenance and building staff are baked in to the rent costs. Therefore, the city using the median rent for the area while paying for these things separately doesn't make sense.

"In this case, the rent doesn't include building staff, building security and everything other than structural maintenance," Fourth Avenue Neighbors member Daniel Price said. "If they say it's $3,500 a month, that's not equivalent to the other one-bedroom rental next door. If you want to be apples to apples, they're probably paying closer to $4,000 in monthly rent."

Fourth Avenue Neighbors also said they doubt that the $3,500 or $3,667 is an accurate rent price for the area. Using Zillow data, they found that the average asking rent for a one-bedroom between 9th and 19th streets and Second and Sixth avenues is $2,593.

DHS has said that after their negotiations are finalized, they expect the rent costs to be the only significant price difference between the Junius Street and Fourth Avenue shelters.

The shelters, set to open later this year, are part of Mayor Bill de Blasio's plan to build 90 new shelters across the city. The plan aims to close the city's commercial hotel and "cluster unit" shelters and build more shelters where homeless New Yorkers are from, rather than only in low-income communities.

The two shelters will bring 250 units for homeless families and 29 permanent supportive housing apartments largely for single mothers with children.

A petition against the shelters, written by the Fourth Avenue Committee, has gained more than 1,250 signatures while another petition in favor of the developments has racked up more than 2,500.