City To Open Two New Hotel Shelters to Offset Bellevue Closure

The city notified two Brooklyn community boards that it will be converting hotels to new shelters for single adult men, stating that they needed to offset lost capacity from the planned closure of the central Bellevue intake facility on Manhattan’s East Side. Two hotels in Flatbush and Crown Heights—a Red Roof Hotel on Flatbush Avenue and a Ramada Hotel on Empire Boulevard—will be converted to homeless shelters, according to members of Brooklyn Community Boards 9 and 14, who received notifications from the city. A spokesperson for the Department of Homeless Services said the openings are in response to the shuttering of the Bellevue men’s intake center, replacing 250 lost beds there with 110 and 130 beds at the hotel shelters, which will be operated by the nonprofit Project Renewal. The crumbling East Midtown building is still available for intake but no longer operates as a shelter, with its most recent residents already relocated to other facilities. Due to the city’s“right to shelter” mandate, everyone in need who requests a bed gets one. The city often turns to hotels in times of high shelter demand, as well as during emergencies like the pandemic. But hotel shelters tend to be more expensive to operate than purpose-built shelters. An expedient need for beds also means fewer site options; there are only so many hotels where converting to a shelter makes business sense. “In nobody’s mind are hotels the best solution to this, but if the city does not have enough appropriate shelter capacity, it has a legal and moral obligation to make sure that people have a place to stay,” said David Giffen, director of the Coalition for the Homeless. The Mamdani administration has said that it wants to move towards more safe haven shelters that—like hotels—afford residents more privacy. But hotel shelters have also been criticized for not having cooking facilities on site, and serving substandard food. At Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s Tuesday presentation on his executive budget for the upcoming fiscal year, the mayor said the city is actually trying to move away from emergency hotel shelters as a cost savings measure. City Hall did not immediately return requests for comment. submitted by /u/Lisalovesreading [link] [comments]