Community Board, Pols Rip City Plan For UWS Women's Shelter

UPPER WEST SIDE, NY — The Upper West Side's local community board voted unanimously Wednesday to oppose a city plan that would repurpose a 120-bed shelter for women in the neighborhood to serve men.

Community Board 7 cited strong community opposition to the plan, good relations between current shelter residents and neighbors and a lack of outreach between the city Department of Homeless Services and the board as reasons to oppose the apparently quick-moving plan.

Board member Sheldon Fine, who chairs CB 7's health and human services committee, said that at least 60 residents testified in support of keeping the shelter as it currently operates during a meeting in late September. Fine said that many of the women living in the shelter have planted roots in the community, some have even found jobs on the Upper West Side and volunteer with the local block association and area churches.

"This was a success story, this was a model," Fine said. "Department of Homeless Services did not show up to our meeting, not even someone to take notes and bring questions back... and insult to the community board and the community."

In its resolution, Community Board 7 asks the Department of Homeless Services to put its plans for the West 107th Street shelter on hold and hold some sort of public forum to explain its intentions for repurposing the facility.

"Our goal is that the women should remain there and they should have the home that they've established, and this cruel and inhumane action — sending people all different places when they've established themselves in the community — cease and not happen," Fine said.

The Department of Homeless Services said in a statement that the West 107th Street shelter is being transitioned to serve men because it sees an increase in demand for beds among that population as the weather gets colder. A spokesperson for the agency disputed claims that women living in the shelter who don't want to move may be displaced.

DHS is currently engaged in the process of moving women out of the shelter to either permanent housing or an alternate location, and expect that men may be moved into the shelter by the end of October, a department spokesperson said.

A host of elected officials also tore into the city's plan Wednesday in a letter sent to the department's commissioner Steven Banks. The elected leaders criticized the department for "both with the process employed by your agency and, more pressingly, with the substance of the proposed change."

The elected officials wrote that the first time anybody was notified of the new plan for the West 107th Street shelter was when individual elected officials received phone calls on Sept. 16. Those officials then took the news to the Community Board and neighborhood residents, who had not been notified, according to the letter.

"Because there has been no formal communication, presentation at the Community Board or for

community residents, rumors abound. We are only able to determine your agency’s proposed
plans for the women and the building through individual phone calls to members of your staff.
This is in itself a disservice to all who are actively engaged in our communities," the letter reads.

The letter was signed by officials such as Borough President Gale Brewer, Congressman Jerrold Nadler, State Assemblymember Danny O'Donnell, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and City Councilmember Mark Levine.