A Gothamist investigation into long-standing dangerous conditions at the 200-bed Tillary Street Women’s Shelter in Downtown Brooklyn shows why homeless people sometimes choose to sleep on the streets rather than enter New York City’s shelter system, the chair of the City Council committee that oversees homeless services said Wednesday.
“We need to do a real reassessment of the types of programs and services and the size of some of these shelters that exist for very vulnerable and high-needs populations,” Councilmember Crystal Hudson said in an interview, reacting to the investigation.
Hudson, whose district includes the Tillary Street shelter, said the fact that some homeless people sleep outside or in the subways indicates the city is failing them.
“Our system is not working the way it’s intended to work,” she said. “If there’s anyone who, for whatever reason, would rather sleep on the street than sleep in a shelter, then we have a lot of work to do in our shelter system.”
The lawmaker’s remarks came the same day Gothamist published its monthslong investigation, which found a deep and ongoing history of dysfunction and violence at the Tillary shelter for women with mental illness and addiction issues.
Last fiscal year, Tillary’s rate of “priority-one serious incidents” — including assaults, arrests, medical crises, overdoses and deaths — was more than double the citywide average for single-adult shelters, city data shows. The facility has also been the subject of thousands of 911 calls over the past decade.
In 2024 alone, the shelter recorded at least 260 fights and disputes, up 72% from 2019. Many altercations in the building involve a major injury or a weapon of some kind.
As the chair of the Council’s general welfare committee, Hudson is responsible for oversight of the city Department of Homeless Services, which supervises local shelters. Her office declined to comment last month on how she planned to address conditions at Tillary. In October, she said she was alarmed by the increasing number of serious incidents at the site.
Gothamist’s report was based on dozens of interviews with current and former residents of the shelter, as well as staff, officials, policy experts and homeless advocates. It also relied on years of city data and incident and inspection reports for the facility, much of it obtained through public records requests.
Tillary’s problems, according to the investigation, go beyond any one operator. Homeless advocates said the shelter’s challenges are the result of blending residents with vastly different health issues in close quarters, the inability of staff to intervene when violence erupts and a lack of monitoring by lawmakers and regulators.
The shelter came under new management in January, after its previous nonprofit operator, the Institute for Community Living, exited its $60 million contract to run Tillary months ahead of its scheduled end on June 30. The organization had run the site for more than 16 years, through several mayoral administrations.
The city depends on dozens of nonprofit contractors to handle the day-to-day operations at hundreds of shelters. But critics, including some homeless advocates, say this arrangement raises accountability and transparency problems with the multibillion-dollar shelter system.
Institute for Community Living leaders said Tillary’s residents were tough to serve because of their complex health conditions and traumas and that they would prefer not to run such a large facility. They and city officials also defended their management of Tillary, saying the staff helped place dozens of women into permanent housing each year and the residents benefited from the shelter’s on-site services and connections to community providers.
The Tillary Street Women's Shelter in Downtown Brooklyn on March 13, 2026
The Bowery Residents’ Committee, a nonprofit that runs multiple other shelters in the city, is now managing Tillary. Its CEO, Muzzy Rosenblatt, told Gothamist his organization is confident it “can and will improve the quality of care and outcomes for the people we serve.”
New York City’s right-to-shelter mandate generally guarantees a bed for anyone who needs one, but Gothamist found some women at Tillary opted to leave the shelter, fearing for their safety. Others who stayed said they tried to keep to themselves as much as possible while in the building.
Sneha Choudhary, a spokesperson for Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s office, said in a statement Wednesday that his administration is working to ensure city shelters are “humane and livable.”
“In our short time in office, we have already opened new shelters and safe havens that demonstrate our commitment to creating high-quality shelters for homeless New Yorkers, in addition to providing comprehensive wraparound services to help individuals reset, recover and get back on their feet,” she said.
A 2024 study out of Ontario, Canada, found that smaller shelters with more privacy and autonomy for clients could reduce violence and other dangers.
Local homeless advocates have for years called for downsizing large congregate shelters like Tillary, which they say are poorly suited for residents’ health and well-being. Tillary is one of the city’s roughly 40 designated mental health shelters and has among the highest bed counts and budgets within that group, city data shows.
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeless Services said city officials are taking steps to open new, smaller shelters that are better equipped to meet residents’ various needs.
“We will continue to work closely with [Tillary’s] new provider to ensure that we are being responsive to the concerns of shelter residents and creating a safer, trauma-informed environment for this exceptionally vulnerable population,” the spokesperson, Neha Sharma, said in a statement Wednesday.
City Hall spokesperson Joe Calvello told Gothamist in a statement last month that the Mamdani administration would work closely with the Bowery Residents’ Committee to “refresh the site and continue adapting to the evolving needs of the community” as part of a broader push to revamp the city’s shelter system.
City Hall officials did not provide additional details on those plans. In March, the mayor announced his administration was closing the hulking, decrepit Bellevue shelter in Midtown East, which has long served as a gateway to the shelter system, and relocating intake services to other shelters in Manhattan.
