Mayor de Blasio has announced the city has placed a temporary pause on the relocation of homeless individuals from The Lucerne Hotel.
The mayor stated “We want to make sure that each person is treated with dignity. I don’t think a temporary hotel placement should be misunderstood as the ideal. I don’t think it is the ideal. It was never meant to be the ideal. We got to get people to the right kind of location for them, so this is why the whole system is being looked at right now.”
He also indicated the city’s next move would be determined quickly.
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COURT RULES TO SHUT DOWN LUCERNE HOTEL HOMELESS SHELTER
DHS Commissioner David Banks also made a statement which ABC7NY.com reported: “As the Mayor said this morning, at this time, while Commissioner Banks and Corp Counsel Johnson are reviewing the situation, we are not moving any clients from these locations as part of this initiative (moves in the normal course, such as to permanent housing, for example, may proceed).”
These comments, and the pause, come after a protest was held at Gracie Mansion on Sunday.
Protesters marched to the east side to protest Mayor de Blasio’s initial decision to transfer the Lucerne Hotel residents to the Harmonia shelter in Midtown, resulting in the displacement of a number of families. The Legal Aid Society states that 80% of Harmonia residents are disabled.
Attorney Randy Mastro, who represents the West Side Community Organization (which lobbied to relocate the Lucerne Hotel residents), put out the following statement in response to the temporary pause:
“We understand and expect that the City will honor its commitment to move folks out of the Lucerne and into state-accredited shelters with proper services on-site by the end of this month. As the Mayor has explained, SRO hotels should only be temporary housing, and what’s happening on the Upper West Side is ‘not acceptable,’ so this move will be a win-win for this neighborhood and this vulnerable population.”
Randy Mastro cares about as much for the homeless as Nero did for the people of Rome.
Agreed..and the UWSers croissant, hot chocolat,mint tea econsumers concerned for their ‘hood ..
Maxwell:
“Agreed..and the UWSers croissant, hot chocolat,mint tea econsumers concerned for their ‘hood ..”
I have lived on the UWS for 55 years, I don’t eat croissants, drink hot chocolate or mint tea, or have concern about my food. I am actually far more concerned about those in real need having food.
Don’t broad-brush an entire neighborhood to satisfy your need for scapegoats.
You make an ad hominem attack, but is the substance of what he is saying correct or not?
Yes or no? Do many of the people who have been placed in these hotels need some form of residential treatment?
If yes, is residential treatment available for them in these hotels?
Stick to the topic, instead of attacking the character of somebody who has raised issues.
Martha:
“Do many of the people who have been placed in these hotels need some form of residential treatment?”
Some do, some don’t.
“If yes, is residential treatment available for them in these hotels?”
Yes, it is. And for any treatment that is not available on site, the provider gives referrals to places they work with that do provide such treatment, and the men actually do go to those treatment facilities.
Get a grip. Do you live near this hotel?? Do you have kids who walk by this hotel? I doubt it. You’re just putting up some b.s. outrage in the name of your phony liberalism. Maybe you’ll be inviting some hotel residents to your home for lunch?
And that is just what they should do!! Enough with the phony outrage already. When did it become a crime to want a safe and clean neighborhood?
Harriet:
“And that is just what they should do!! Enough with the phony outrage already. When did it become a crime to want a safe and clean neighborhood?”
You may want to consider that “safe and clean” has become the new euphemism for NIMBY. What YOU want is a gated community, and you will not get that here.
Mark:
“Get a grip. Do you live near this hotel?? Do you have kids who walk by this hotel? I doubt it. You’re just putting up some b.s. outrage in the name of your phony liberalism. Maybe you’ll be inviting some hotel residents to your home for lunch?”
i live three blocks from the Lucerne and walk and bike in the neighborhood every day. And while I don’t have children, there are three families in my building with young children, and ONE of them has expressed ANY concern about the situation: they walk around the neighborhood with their children, go to the park and playground, and have not seen or experienced anything that has troubled them. As for inviting homeless to my home for lunch, I spent 12 years doing daily outreach to the homeless on the UWs, including helping to feed them, clothe them, and even finding housing on occasion.
What have YOU done?
Exactly!
What a disingenuous comment. And why is he referring to the Lucerne as a “SRO Hotel”?! Why are homeless people on the Upper West Side ‘not acceptable,’ in his words, but ‘acceptable’ elsewhere?
It is depressing to see folks on the upper west side behave like the rest of the nation — “permitted” to express its dark side by the White House occupant and revert to trival behavior. Having lived here since the 60’s, having JUST walked around the 70’s again, I see little evidence of the worsening of the homeless issues because of the use of these hotels … it predates this mayoral administration, this councilwoman and can be traced to the public refusal to build affordable housing. If I recall correctly, it began with Nixon’s reversal of Great Society programs, reached a high point under Reagan and remains a festering sore.
S E Cooper
What “dark side” do you claim is being expressed?
People do not want the needy abandoned. They want them properly cared for, and not warehoused and left unsupervised in those instances where lack of supervision results in dangers for the community.
Not that I’m a Nixon fan, but Nixon fought, with bi-partisan support, to EXPAND welfare guarantees to families with dependent children. Nixos proposed a guaranteed income program, not too different from proposals made in recent years by Andrew Yang. Ultimately, Nixon’s Family Assistance Plan did not pass Congress, but welfare wound up being strengthened.
You are not a reliable witness, I’m afraid.
Martha:
“People do not want the needy abandoned. They want them properly cared for, and not warehoused and left unsupervised in those instances where lack of supervision results in dangers for the community.”
Thank you. However, the providers at the hotels provide very robust services for their clients. And they are not “warehouses.” They were moved from the congregate shelters to be able to social distance and decrease the spread of the virus. And it has worked. Prior to the moves, the infection rate for the homeless was ~5 points higher than the general population. It is now 2 points lower.
But yes, the congregate shelters, particularly those run directly by the City (as opposed to those run by service providers) are like “warehouses,” with few if any social services, and a serious lack of supervision. So what we should be focusing on is THAT, and not temporary facilities that are saving lives.
Thanks.
Martha Wilson:
Someone else here corrected your errors about the “needy” homeless hotel temporary residents being provided necessary services and referrals, so I won’t repeat.
S.E. is quite correct about the problem of lack of interest in building affordable housing for ordinary working New Yorkers. New York has been given over to developers so that now the only buildings going up on the UWS, like much of Manhattan, is luxury housing. Much of it half empty, being sold just for investment and not for real people to live in. (And too few of those huge glass buildings include even a mere 4-12 so-called “affordable” units that are not actually affordable to those who don’t fit into the income charts or don’t even bother to add their names to the hundreds who put in for the lottery.)
Aside from homelessness, this lack of affordable housing for average working people is why several of my peers, fortunate not to have become homeless, have had to move out of state – and one entirely out of the country – despite living and working on the UWS and for 40+ years, paying rent and even purchasing homes, paying taxes, contributing to the community and neighborhood. Another friend, a resident of 40+ years and homeowner for 30, will move out of state in the next year…and I have little doubt that I’ll soon be next!
And I’d like to point out that many among “the needy” (in your words) do not want to be “properly cared for” (in your words) — they want the same as you and me: a dignified life and to be able to care for themselves and their families. That means a safe, affordable home, a job with a livable wage, access to affordable mental and bodily health care, and healthy food for their children. And it means that, if they must temporarily reside in a homeless shelter while they get back on their feet (e.g. after a lost job, divorce, jail term, spell of addiction, house fire, medical problem), being referred to as “the needy” and being chased out of a privileged neighborhood is not helpful to their recovery.
~Another “reliable witness”
Rashomon.
I walked by the synagogue and pre-school 40 feet from my house with my grandchild and saw a white man masturbating.
I saw men on Broadway doing drugs.
I was aggressively panhandled 2x over the past 3 weeks. I am a Senior.
So I guess depending on when or where you look you experience different things.
I think everyone is in agreement that these 700 people are not getting the help they need. Tragic. Stop the name calling and advocate for both safe streets and adequate and appropriate help for the homeless no matter if they are ex-convicts, sex offenders, drug addicts, mentally disturbed &/or just down on their luck.
Elder:
“I walked by the synagogue and pre-school 40 feet from my house with my grandchild and saw a white man masturbating. I saw men on Broadway doing drugs. I was aggressively panhandled 2x over the past 3 weeks. I am a Senior.”
And pray tell, how do you know that those people were from the hotels, and not street homeless? Do you carry a book of photos of the hotel residents that you can match the faces to? If not, how are you so certain that those men were residents of the hotels?
But that makes no sense – if the men you encountered were hotel residents why wouldn’t they be masturbating and taking drugs in their comfortable rooms rather than on the street?!
Probably because they were not hotel residents but part of the ongoing homeless and panhandling population on the UWS, and around the city, that existed well before anyone was moved here from a shelter. I’m not sure how you have missed seeing homeless people until this summer, as I’ve certainly noticed street people increasing over the past few years. Which concerned me but did not freak me out.
You mention housing and, yes, this does speak to the serious lack of low-income and affordable housing – which is something that many of us UWS residents have vociferously advocated for over many many years. I hope you have, too. Meanwhile, we’ve seen affordable housing here being lost while luxury developments have increased dramatically.
As just a small sampling of evidence: (1) the building where I’ve lived, affordably, for 40+ years was sold to a developer and vacant apartments turned into luxury condos, most 3-4-5 bed/3-4-5 baths (thankfully I’m rent stabilized, for now; but many residents were moved out); (2) on this page as I type there is a pop-up ad for a new development in the neighborhood, at which I see that the lowest rent is $2,387 for a one-room studio, which is not “affordable” for any working person among my friends; and (3) the SRO on the street behind my building, where my windows look out on, was divvied up and part was purchased by a developer and turned into a BOUTIQUE LUXURY building, where the lowest priced apartment I see listed costs $1,650,000, with monthly costs of $2,387 for 2 bed/2 baths – $1.6 mill is not ‘affordable’ housing for any family among my acquaintances of working people.
And yes, I have multiple friends, also “seniors,” who have had to move out of their previously “affordable” UWS neighborhoods where they have lived and worked and contributed and paid taxes for 25-45 years – thankfully none became homeless, but two had to pick up and move out of state, one had to move out of the country – and I just got off a phone call with my former roommate who said next year (or sooner if she loses her job, which is on shaky ground) she will have to sell her home and move out of state, most likely to move in with her sister. I may be next.
~ “Also a Senior”
I’ve seen very little difference in the Upper West Side, and wonder what all the fuss is. We’ve ALWAYS had homeless people. Why is it worse for them to be in a hotel than on the street? They can take a damned shower, which they’re almost never able to do, and be inside in a bed where they can get their heads together.
Right on target.
Seems like some residents never noticed the homeless until the last few months?! Or, maybe like Napoca, below, they don’t mind if smelly homeless live on the street, they are only upset that the men are IN a “4-star hotel”? I suppose they’d rather the hotels be empty without business and have to let staff go, rather than see some poor people have a clean bed and a shower for a little while.
Just had lunch with my niece at La Sirene on the corner of 80th and Amsterdam. We were serenaded by a man screaming, “I’m not leaving here, ever!” Another about jumped the flowerbed onto our table, about impossible to move. Another day, we were accosted by a man “selling” roses. I truly don’t know how others are not seeing the devolution, intrusion and escalating intimidation. This is not about race, it’s about behavior. Some years ago, there was a halfway house on the block. No one complained, I even supported it to the abject horror of some of my neighbors, but there was serious counseling and no defication, masterbation, public abuse of drugs and/or alcohol, nor was there incessant intimidating begging. I could not care less about race and resent kneejerk accusations from people who have not lived through this before and cannot admit to themselves that such behavior is untenable from anyone, white, black, Hispanic, gay, straight, Canadian, name it–let alone hundreds of someones.
I hate the bonehead idea to displace disabled families to move a terrible situation somewhere else and so, knowing this, I accept that the problem–and it is–should remain here rather than compound more innocent suffering. Unless the families switch places to The Lucerne, which would be not only humane, but oddly logical. I doubt the neighborhood would be up in arms with such an arrangement.
Not racism. Not NIMBY. It hurts my heart that people can’t seem to be compassionate to all of us, homeless or poor elderly (that would be me) just struggling to live through desperate times.
God bless the folks who don’t see what I’m seeing. As my dear old (Canadian) mother used to say, “It’s good living in the State of Denial. The weather is always fine.”
What? Do you mean you never before had someone come up to you on the street or at a sidewalk restaurant, and try to sell you an overpriced rose?! How long have you lived on the UWS and managed to NEVER see homeless people on the streets….until last summer? Were you in the ‘state of denial’ all this time?
Of course! It’s always disturbing to ALL of us to see homeless people living in desperate situations, whether in this neighborhood or around the city. But it was disturbing to me BEFORE three months ago. So, I, like some other UWS residents, was able to not entirely freak out when homeless people were moved to the empty hotels. Because I understood that we’re living in a global pandemic, that it was done for safety reasons in a crisis, that the situation is temporary. And that the hotels were otherwise empty, without business, and would have to let staff go. AND that I am not so ‘special’ that I should be shielded from ever seeing poor or homeless people in ‘my’ neighborhood!
You do realize, don’t you, that some the disturbing behavior you speak of will still continue when the Lucerne is empty again? Because not all the homeless on the streets are from the hotel, they’ve been here before. Maybe you’ve just stepped over them or averted your eyes.
So, I do encourage you to pay attention to the homeless situation – but NOT only on W79th St. – and advocate for: more affordable housing being built instead of luxury buildings, a continuing restriction on evictions, maintaining rent stabilization instead of loopholes that let landlords move apartments off rent stabilization, and increased funding for safe shelters,jobs training programs, mental health and addiction treatment.
Meanwhile, can I remind us that we are trying to survive a global pandemic! When so many of our fellow citizens have lost jobs, income, and benefits – some permanently — and are struggling to feed their families. Or those who are working from home while at the same time trying to school their children? When many of our local stores and small businesses have closed, some permanently, or lost at least half a year’s worth of income? When the entire NYC income-producing tourist/hotel/
culture/theater/restaurant industry is still closed or struggling?
The possibility of my encountering a panhandler while I’m lunching at an outdoor restaurant pales by comparison.
I’m certainly concerned about addressing homelessness, but I am focused on my neighborhood and my City opening safely and getting back on its feet economically. I am focused on my family and friends – and people across the US and around the world – NOT getting sick and dying from COVID19! I’m focused about health care and essential workers staying safe, and families being able to visit their loved ones in the hospital. I’m concerned that I, like many, could not visit my friend in a nursing home before she died from COVID, that I could not attend the recent funerals of my aunt and a dear family friend, and that I was not able to travel to another state to visit my elderly mother.
Since when ex convicts , addicts , sex offenders need to have a better life then a hard working citizen who hold 2 or 3 jobs to pay rent in a less nicer neighborhood. What kind of morals were teaching our kids ? Be a junky an you’ll stay at 4 star hotel in best neighborhood, don’t worry , you don’t need to work hard – everything will come to you just like that . Sick and tired of this extreme liberals .
The people who should feel outraged are people who went to college, work hard all their life and have worst housing then those people who probably never contributed anything good to the society , only sucking on the system.
Ah, so the truth comes out! Thank you for your ‘honesty’ and for exposing the true despicable thoughts behind the “we care about the homeless” or “it is just poorly managed” euphemisms some others have hidden behind.
So, you would rather neighborhood hotels remain empty without any business – and perhaps eventually close permanently – and that their staff be laid off. Rather than see some poor people temporarily have a clean bed and a clean bathroom. So humane! I imagine that you’d also complain about former hotel employees needing to go on unemployment insurance – you’d probably whine that they are “sucking on the system” of taxpayers like yourself.
So you are arguing that ALL the people temporarily placed in the hotels and/or ALL homeless people are convicts, addicts, and sex offenders ….even though many hold jobs, some are ex-offenders who did their time and are trying to get back on their feet, or are addicts getting treatment instead of staying on drugs. You don’t just want poor people to not have something that you have – health, a job, a clean safe home – you want poor people to not exist at all.
Many of us are hardworking citizens who struggle to continue to pay NY rents but still manage to maintain our common sense and humanity during a crisis, rather than freaking out, as well as to teach our children compassion when they see people less fortunate. You don’t need to be a “liberal” to be compassionate toward homeless people, you just need to be human; there are some people who are “conservative” but still manage to be rational about the need to address homelessness as a problem.
I know many many people “who went to college, work[ed] hard all their life” AND contributed to their neighborhood, paid taxes, paid rent for decades on the affordable UWS, but now have had to move out of the state and even in one case out of the country, because NYC has been given over developers of luxury housing. So, don’t blame homeless people for NY becoming unaffordable for working people.
Thank you, Napoca. Very well said and I admire your bravery in saying it.
Napoca isn’t blaming homeless people for this situation. He’s blaming you. And all bleeding heart liberals with the kind of progressive tunnel vision you display in your mouthy comments that lack the compassion you want others to have.
Thank you for the “liberal” compliment!
I notice that you have no substantive response, you only pick out a few words that will give you a chance to put out your own agenda …and try to insult me.
Anyway, I’ve heard this all before. But there’s something I’ve been wanting to clarify that so far no respondents have been willing to explain, maybe you and Napoca will be able to: if it is so much easier to not work hard, but instead to be poor, even homeless, why don’t you try it?
You wouldn’t “need to work hard all your life,” “2 or 3 jobs to pay rent” – you could live for free, maybe even in a “4-star hotel in [the] best neighborhood.” In addition to free housing, “everything will come to you just like that” – I guess “everything” means free healthy food, free (donated) clothing, free medical care, and so forth.
So, why aren’t you giving it a try?
Kathleen C:
“Napoca isn’t blaming homeless people for this situation. He’s blaming you. And all bleeding heart liberals with the kind of progressive tunnel vision you display in your mouthy comments that lack the compassion you want others to have.”
You might want to consider that it was us “bleeding heart liberals” who created the UWS that people like yourself wanted to move into.
Napoca? Kicking those people out of the hotels won’t put one extra cent in my pocket. Or yours. All it will do is hurt them, and not help you at all. Lose-Lose.
You ENVY people who have NOTHING. You envy people who were sleeping on the street and begging for change. That’s one of the most bizarre things I’ve ever seen.
“The man who lives in division is not a person but only an “individual.” I have what you have not. I am what you are not. I have taken what you have failed to take and I have seized what you could never get. Therefore you suffer and I am happy, you are despised and I am praised, you die and I live; you are nothing and I am something, and I am all the more something because you are nothing.
“And thus I spend my life admiring the distance between you and me; at times this even helps me to forget the other men who have what I have not and who have taken what I was too slow to take and who have seized what was beyond my reach, who are praised as I cannot be praised and who live on after my death.”
– Thomas Merton
I do security at the Lucerne and we have 20 guards on duty at all times. Not to mention NYPD making rounds every 15 minutes. And they have curfew. We work all the way down to 77th street. We also keep a close eye on the park on 77th & Amsterdam. We have no child molesters , rapist or Pedophiles.
Crime isn’t going up & our clients aren’t being arrested. Most of them have jobs. Others are recovering from substance abuse. Others were left unemployed by COVID-19. Any mistake they make gets them released so they are literally on their best behavior.
This hotel employees so many people it would be a-shame if all this ends because a few wealthy people feel paranoid. The hotel was empty & the owner was paid millions for his cooperation. If these people weren’t at the Lucerne they would be on the street so pick your poison.
Thank you for the facts.
I mislaid the comment from the person who “corrected” my Nixon remark … perhaps he.she/they forgot the defunding (by Nixon) of Legal Aid,;the effort to eliminate Head Start (nearly worked),;the veto of the last serious effort in the US to establish a national child care system to support working women (he wanted women home raising babies), etc etc. However the real point I was making was not a Nixon history lesson — it was the continued undermining of federal support for affordable housing. Following World War II, government backing of cheap loans for veterans permitted the expansion of the suburbs for white working and middle class people, some urban construction of public housing but the endless push for free market approaches combined with redlining ended that. A study by a CUNY colleague discovered in the 1990’s that the vast majority of homeless men were Vietnam vets and when CUNY attempted an outreach program, it was defunded by the Pataki crew — along with support for education in prisons which we are now restoring in some places. By the way, if you were to visit Italy, you might find someone selling roses in restaurants in nearly every city.
Love your comment about Italy! So true!
Vee:
Just want to thank you for all your courageous, honest and powerful comments.
Peace.