Residents of local shelter allege poor living conditions and neglect of persons with disabilities

Residents allege mistreatment, poor conditions, intimidation, and refusal to accommodate persons with disabilities at the Acacia-run homeless shelter at 353 38th Street.

Last month, the Sunset Post reported on a resident of the 38th Street shelter, Ronald Davidson, who spoke at October’s Community Board 7 meeting. During open comment, Davidson said he was seeking accommodations for his disability, aphasia, a communication disorder caused by a head injury he suffered in 1979 and worsened by COVID-19 that makes it hard for him to speak.

In an Acacia shelter where he previously stayed, he requested an assistive communication device, but says he was denied. He then informed administrators he would be filing a lawsuit against them. According to Davidson, when employees of that shelter saw him using a computer to work on the suit, they removed him from that shelter and moved him to another, one with no access to the internet.

While residing at this second shelter, he says he was able to file his lawsuit using a computer at his workplace, a grocery store. When he informed employees of the second shelter that he had filed the suit, he was moved to the shelter at 38th Street, a former Comfort Inn hotel, which Davidson described as the worst shelter he has stayed at so far. He says it is the dirtiest, the food is awful, and staff continue to deny him access to the internet, which he needs to review his medical records and push Acacia to accommodate his disability.

These conditions were corroborated and expanded upon by two other residents of the shelter.

“The food is awful, and we don’t have beds,” said senior resident José Manzana. “We’re sleeping on nothing but frames.”

Robert Kirk, another resident, echoed the same. “The food they serve is horrible. It’s not real food. We sleep on box springs. When you wake, you can hardly walk,” Kirk said, adding that he has witnessed staff resort to violence. “A worker picked up my walker and threw it at another worker.”

Kirk said he feared threats and retaliation from staff for speaking to the press.

When approached about allegations of mistreatment and refusal to accommodate residents with disabilities, neither the director of services at the 38th Street shelter nor any executives of Acacia Network responded to multiple in-person and email requests for comment.

Instead, during one visit to the 38th Street shelter, workers summoned the police in an attempt to remove Sunset Post reporters who were standing outside the premises speaking with residents.

Only one employee of the shelter, who declined to be identified by name, spoke on the record about treatment of residents. “We treat them fine here,” the employee said. “The food is good. I’ve worked at shelters where they only give them trays, but this is real food.”

When asked about refusing to accommodate the disabilities of certain residents, the employee replied that those were isolated issues from residents “who want to be babied.”

This same employee, who said he spent time in prison, explained that “the shelter is just like a prison. It’s just that you have to do what the workers say, be where they ask you to be at a certain time, and you won’t have any issues.” When pressed on whether a homeless shelter should be run “like a prison,” this employee said he saw no issue with that.

This comment echoes a quote from Davidson, who stated that Acacia Network is “working on the basis of a for-profit prison model.”

Acacia under scrutiny

This is not the first time Acacia Network has been under scrutiny for its practices in recent years.

Acacia, based in the Bronx, is one of the largest operators of homeless shelters in New York City. According to city data its Acacia Network Housing, Inc. division operated 53 shelters with 5,417 beds as of February 2024.

In October 2024, the Department of Investigation released a report titled “DOI Examination of Compliance Risks at City-Funded Homeless Shelter Providers and the City’s Oversight of Shelter Providers.” Among the DOI’s findings, investigators highlighted conflicts of interest and nepotism in hiring, including hiring family members in “no-show” or “low-show” jobs, non-competitive procurement of city contracts, and “unreasonable” executive compensation at some providers.

In these findings, Acacia Network was singled out for its executive compensation. According to the report, Acacia’s president and chief executive officer, Raul Russi, received $916,359 in total compensation from Acacia Network and related organizations in 2021, $911,751 in 2020, and $862,705 in 2019.

Separate IRS Form 990 filings for Acacia Network show that in 2023 Russi received $909,372 in “reportable compensation from the organization” and $70,634 in “other compensation from the organization and related organizations,” for a total of $980,006.

Between Russi and three other members of the executive team — the CEO, chief legal officer, and chief financial officer — the four were paid a combined $2,505,769 in 2023, according to the same filing.

In a footnote in the DOI report, Acacia noted that a third-party consultant had conducted studies of its executive compensation in 2018 and 2020, and said those studies show the salary meets standards of “reasonableness” under federal and state guidance. The organization also characterized the share of executive salary allocated to the Acacia Network Housing budget, relative to its overall budget, as “miniscule.”

This compensation stands in stark contrast to a federal wage-and-hour class and collective action brought by a former social worker who says Acacia committed wage theft, including by making her clock out at 4 p.m. and continue working. In March of this year, a federal judge in the Southern District of New York conditionally certified a collective of hourly workers across multiple Acacia sites under federal wage-and-hour law and authorized notices inviting them to join the case.

This is one of several lawsuits filed against Acacia in the past few years.

Community Board follow-up

Community Board 7 is following up on the alleged lack of accommodations for persons with disabilities with city officials.

The office of Jeremy Laufer, district manager of Community Board 7, has scheduled a private meeting with multiple city agencies in the second week of December, in which they will discuss these issues with the Department of Homeless Services (DHS) of New York City.

Laufer said he believes the lack of accommodations for disabled individuals “may be a city-wide issue.”

The meeting is closed-door and not open to the public.

During November’s Community Board 7 meeting, Laufer also shared that DHS sent the board a notice that the agency plans to open another shelter in Sunset Park, on 45th Street, west of Fourth Avenue, sometime in 2028.