Residents confront city officials over planned 25th Street shelter

After months of protesting the new single men’s shelter at 225 25th Street, Sunset Park residents were finally able to confront city officials about the decision at the CB7 Housing Committee meeting on June 10.

Executives at HELP USA, the nonprofit in charge of the 200-bed shelter’s operations, announced at the meeting that they will establish a hotline for concerned neighbors to call and create a Community Advisory Board (CAB) to facilitate private quarterly meetings between shelter staff and community members.

Daniel Farrell, HELP USA’s chief operating officer, attempted to assuage concerned residents by clarifying that the shelter will only host men classified by the Department of Homeless Services as “employable” and that formerly incarcerated men would likely be sent to other shelters farther away from residential areas. He also announced that a 58-person staff would oversee operations to ensure safety.

Most of the meeting attendees were not consoled. City Councilmember Alexa Avilés said she understood the need for more shelters but that much of the community’s frustration stems from flaws in the “Fair Share analysis” presented to the board — the city’s name for the process it uses to determine where to place new shelters.

Avilés described the document as “not only riddled with errors but is an utterly careless document that, quite frankly, has no rationale and is infuriating and actually flies in the face of what the fair share policy is.”

“At some point, enough is enough,” said Julio Peña III, the chair of the community board. “We are bursting at the seams in our social services, in the way we support our neighbors, and there needs to be some kind of equalization where other communities need to lift this burden.”

The conversation heated up when multiple board members pushed back against Department of Social Services Chief Strategy Officer Christopher Gonzalez’s claim that the accusation of a high concentration of shelters in the neighborhood was an “opinion.” He noted that the area is not as saturated as other parts of the city.

“Sunset Park has more shelters than Park Slope, Windsor Terrace, Borough Park, and Bay Ridge combined. That is a fact, not an opinion, Mr. Gonzalez, and I need you to understand that,” said Sam Sierra, a CB7 board member.

Gonzalez admitted that the process could be improved and said that progress is being made to make sure that future shelters will be placed equitably.

“At the beginning of the Mamdani administration, we announced shelters in every district that did not currently have a shelter. I know that that’s a small step forward, but that is the intention, to really think more critically about where we’re putting these facilities to make sure that one neighborhood is not more saturated than another,” said Gonzalez.

A sizable minority of attendees spoke up in support of the shelter, despite acknowledging that the process for site selection was flawed. Five community members expressed their support for the shelter and drew attention to the need to address the homelessness crisis in the city.

Alex, a soup kitchen volunteer who lives on 22nd Street and has worked with families experiencing severe housing insecurity, expressed frustration about some comments made by community members who are against the shelter.

“You need to remember that this is not a carceral thing. People are in this shelter because they fell on hard times. They are there because they are poor, they are there because the city does not do shit for people in terms of housing. They are not there because they are bad people, and they are not there because they committed a crime. You don’t need to worry about security,” he said.

“I was moved by a lot of the comments tonight in support of the shelter, and in support of the people who are going to be in this shelter,” said John Santore, who has lived in Sunset Park since 2016. “I am a single man. I have not had a home repeatedly over the last 10 years. Every time I called my parents, I went back to my childhood bedroom, and I stayed there until I had a place to stay. Some people don’t have that opportunity.”

Board members said that they appreciated the initiative to create a CAB but that quarterly private meetings are confusing and inadequate, and that the selection process for CAB members was opaque. City officials said that CAB members would be chosen based on input from the community board and an internal process to determine a representative sample of stakeholders in the community, such as small business owners.

The shelter is likely to open in September or October, said Farrell, who expects at least 10 men in the shelter to receive housing placements per month.

Neighbors interested in joining the CAB can reach out to Community Board 7 at bk07@cb.nyc.gov for more information.