OP-ED: An Open Letter To Brooklyn Borough President Eric L. Adams

Editor's note: This op-ed is from the Crown Heights Revitalization Movement, in response to Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams' letter published in Our Time Press last week.

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An Open Letter to Borough President Eric L. Adams

You have expressed that your mother is concerned that there be a place for the homeless in Crown Heights. We invite you and your mother to visit the many shelters already open in Crown Heights.

With 1,235 beds in Crown Heights and 1,527 in Bed-Stuy we are quite sure your mother will easily find a bed.

We have been more than generous for years, as you already know from being our state representative. While we have all of these beds, right now in Williamsburg, Bensonhurst, Bay Ridge, Borough Park there are zero beds.

Why would the City start its new plan for 90 more shelters with three new shelters in Crown Heights? This hardly seems like the way to display the new fair share.

The Mayor’s major theme in announcing his new plan is that he wants the homeless to be close to their communities. While this is laudable, in fact, his plan does not do a very good job of this. He claims that the 104 men (for the 1173 Bergen St. shelter) will come from the Crown Heights area. In court, however, the city’s Department of Homeless Services (DHS) already admitted that “about” half come from Crown Heights and the rest come from “other parts of Brooklyn.”

Court documents, affirmed by Martha Calhoun, Senior Counsel at the New York City Law Department, say this:

"In accordance with the city plan, DHS will refer the senior men to the Bergen St. Shelter who are from Crown Heights Neighborhood or nearby communities." (Please take note of the word "or") "DHS anticipates that: approximately a third of the clients will be from CD8 and CD3, a third from surrounding community district of Central Brooklyn, and the remainder will be from other neighborhoods in Brooklyn as based on the client’s last known address."

Of the 104 men to be sheltered on Bergen Street, it seems that as few as 17 could come from Crown Heights, CB8.

Meanwhile CORE has a $32 million dollar contract that will pay them $67k per individual they house in the shelter. At that price, you can bet that they will find men over 62 to fill those beds and get their money regardless of where their last known address was. While a non-profit corporation, CORE'S CEO Jack Brown still manages to pay himself a handsome salary. According to CORE'S 990 tax filing in 2014, he was paid a salary of $223,100 and keeps the corporate offices in Dumbo, one of the most expensive neighborhoods in Brooklyn.

Another one of our members' experiences put this discussion of homelessness in a different light. After living in Crown Heights for 12 years, as a result of a series of unanticipated events, he moved back to Park Slope three months ago, where he had previously lived for 25 years. It was shocking to see how much the Slope had changed. Nothing but well-heeled young professionals, almost all white, pushing baby carriages. Gone largely were the working class folks who still comprised a large part of the population when he moved there in 1977. The few people of color he saw were clearly well-educated and very conventional looking.

A far cry from Crown Heights.

Perhaps these liberal Park Slopers would do well to see what poor, homeless men look like. Why crowd them all into homeless shelters in areas already saturated with poor people? Perhaps the neighbors of Bill de Blasio, who lived in Park Slope until he moved to Gracie Mansion, would better appreciate what a tale of two cities looks like if they had a few shelters in their neighborhood. And perhaps the homeless men would have some new role models to emulate.

Clearly, the policy of dumping poor people in poor neighborhoods has not gotten good results. Maybe it is time for a change.