Crown Heights Homeless Shelter To Remain Closed As City, Residents Negotiate

DOWNTOWN BROOKLYN — A planned homeless shelter in Crown Heights will remain closed after a Brooklyn judge on Friday ordered the city and a group of residents suing them to continue negotiating the placement of the shelter in their neighborhood.

Brooklyn Supreme Court Judge Katherine A. Levine brought the two sides behind closed doors at a hearing Friday afternoon. About an hour later, they emerged and Levine said they have continued to engage in "more fruitful discussions."

"I urge all parties to do what they've been doing so this can be resolved in a fashion everyone is happy with," Levine said.

The city submitted updated documents to the court Friday morning detailing how the placement the shelter — a 104-bed home for senior homeless men at 1173 Bergen St. — and the plans in place for its operations and security.

Another hearing is scheduled for May 15, and the temporary restraining order against the shelter remains in place until a decision is made.

The residents sued the city, the Department of Homeless Services, shelter operator CORE Service and building owner CSN Partner and said their neighborhood is already unfairly overburdened by shelters, especially compared to more white and affluent neighborhoods. They say the city did not follow laws that govern where city facilities can be placed.

It's unclear exactly what the parties could be negotiating.

"I don’t want to comment on exactly what’s going on back there, but I wouldn’t label it a compromise," Phillip Solomon, an attorney for the residents, said outside of the courtroom. after the hearing "That would suggest that there’s things that we’re asking for that we’re giving up and same thing for the city. And that would not be the case."

Solomon said their discussions have mostly been "about the law. There are legal aspects to this that remain unresolved or unknown. The lawyers are trying to get through the case law."

Solomon said Levine has forbade the two sides from detailing the discussions publicly.

Isaac McGinn, a spokesman for the Department of Homeless Services, said the city believes it has case law on its side.

"New York City is under court order to provide shelter for all homeless individuals in need and we look forward to the judge’s ruling on this case, with confidence that the court will recognize our vital need for these high-quality beds, as courts have for decades in these kinds of cases," McGinn said.

The shelter is one of 90 that Mayor Bill de Blasio wants to open across the city as he closes hotel and "cluster sites." Three of those 90 are already open, and the other two that have been proposed under the plan are both in Crown Heights.

The other one would house 132 families with children at Rogers Avenue and Carroll Street in the southern part of Crown Heights.

People who live near that proposed shelter were at Friday's hearing, too. They are considering a lawsuit against the city of their own, also on the grounds that there are too many shelters in their neighborhood.

The Bergen Street shelter has been blocked from opening several times as the case continued.

This is a developing story and will be updated.