The 59th Street Shelter Opened in May. Some Neighbors Say the Block Hasn’t Been the Same Since.

Gertrude Ederle Playground has a new neighbor. Since the spring, the building beside it (at 537 West 59th Street) has been a 200-bed, dorm-style shelter for single women, and the families who use that playground have spent the summer keeping a running record of what they’ve seen.

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Neighbors told ABC7 this week that they’ve watched people apparently overdosing, drinking, using drugs and talking to children through the playground fence, and that they’ve found needles and bottles left inside the gates. One father who lives a block away and has children aged two and four said he used to bring them daily and has stopped. Similar accounts ran in the New York Post a day earlier, including a woman who’s lived in the area 17 years telling the paper that ambulances are called to the building as often as four times a day, and a teacher who said her school now walks students to a playground farther away.

Roughly 500 people from the surrounding blocks have joined a group that documents and shares incidents around the shelter, according to ABC7. Neighbors quoted by both outlets pushed back on the idea that this is a case of not wanting services nearby. They said they want the site used for supportive housing serving women at a more stable point in their recovery, and at a smaller scale than 200 beds.

Running underneath the complaints is a piece of the project that was pitched directly at these neighbors back when they were fighting it: a ground-floor medical clinic that wouldn’t just treat the women living upstairs, but anyone from the surrounding blocks who walked through the door. The shelter opened without it, and the city and its own contractor don’t agree on when that will change.

The Department of Social Services told ILTUWS the clinic has been approved by New York State and is waiting on a federal sign-off the agency expects soon. Project Renewal, the nonprofit that operates the shelter and that provides housing, health care and workforce programs for people struggling with addiction and mental health, gave us a different picture. A spokesperson said the clinic still needs approvals from several federal entities, including the Health Resources and Services Administration, the agency that certifies community health centers, along with Medicaid and Medicare. That process can be lengthy, the spokesperson said, and the organization now anticipates the clinic opening to the public no sooner than six months from now.

Project Renewal also confirmed the shelter began accepting clients on May 6.

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“This recently opened site is currently equipped with clinicians, case managers, and other social services staff to address the complex needs of each client and help them on their unique path to recovery and permanent housing,” a DSS spokesperson said. “DSS has met with the council member’s office to address concerns and has also set up a community advisory board to work collaboratively to support our vulnerable neighbors.” The agency said it’s looking into the neighbors’ claims and works to ensure staff and clients follow good neighbor policies.

The clinic was one of the most-argued-over pieces of the project in 2023, when the group Friends of Ederle Playground circulated a petition and rallied at the site. Project Renewal told ILTUWS at the time that the 1,500-square-foot space would operate as a Federally Qualified Health Center, a federal designation that comes with a legal obligation to treat people from the surrounding community and not only shelter residents. Services were to include primary care, women’s health, HIV treatment and behavioral health. Project Renewal also said then that its on-site doctor would write prescriptions, including for Suboxone, but that no medication would be dispensed anywhere in the building.

Council Member Gale Brewer, who joined that opposition at a September 2023 press conference, confirmed to ILTUWS that she met recently with Project Renewal over the complaints, and said that meeting hasn’t produced results yet. She said she still doesn’t have an opening date for the clinic and has been asking for one. Her understanding is that the delay involves permits she believed were coming from the state, though she said the agencies would have to confirm that.

What Brewer says she’s pushing for is a change in who gets referred to the shelter. “We’re near a playground. We’re in a residential neighborhood. We’re across the street from a college,” she said. “We need residents who do not have this level of challenge or mental illness.”

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DSS pushed back on the framing of the $500 million figure that has followed this project since 2023. According to the agency, that’s a cost-certain contract running from August 2021 through June 2060, close to 40 years rather than a lump sum for the building, and the cost of the clinic is included in it. Providers have to submit invoices and documentation of services delivered in order to be paid. DSS said that over the past year it connected nearly 400 New Yorkers to permanent housing through its partnership with Project Renewal.

The Post reported that Friends of Ederle Playground asked the city Department of Investigation in 2023 to look into the contract, which was awarded during the final months of the de Blasio administration.

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