One photo shows a man who supposedly overdosed on a pharmacy floor. Another shows someone sleeping on the steps of the New York Historical Society with his hands down his pants. Comments below the pictures refer to the men, most of whom are Black or Latino, as “creatures” and “sub-human.” There are calls to remove benches, to make life less “livable,” or to bring in the Guardian Angels to patrol the neighborhood.
These are all images and comments circulating in a newly created Facebook group Upper West Siders for Safer Streets and on their Twitter account, part of a push by some residents in the neighborhood to kick out several temporary shelters, which opened up in hotels recently as part of the city’s plan to reduce the spread of COVID-19 in the crowded shelter system.
As part of an effort to let residents better socially distance, some 10,000 people were moved out of crowded shelters into 63 hotels across the city.
Isaac McGinn, a spokesman for the Department of Homeless Services, said three Upper West Side hotels have been housing the homeless since May: The Belleclaire, the Park West, and the Belnord. A fourth hotel, the Lucerne on 79th Street, opened on July 27, for a total of around 730 people around the four locations.
“The fact that people are willing to espouse progressive values until they have to live them was deeply disappointing to me,” said Melissa Sanchez, 47, a gender studies professor, whose son attends P.S. 87. “We were troubled by the idea that unhoused persons had to be exiled from our neighborhood because of our children. The rumors that they’re all sex offenders, that they’re all drug dealers, it rings with the rhetoric of all Mexican immigrants are rapists and drug dealers. It rings with hysteria about entire populations.”
An online petition with more than 3,900 signatures is demanding homeless residents be removed from the hotels in the neighborhood. In email updates to constituents, Councilmember Helen Rosenthal said she was demanding the city remove all sex offenders from the facilities and would advocate for fewer temporary shelters in the neighborhood.
The Parent Association at P.S. 87 asked its members to write and call elected officials and reporters demanding the same, citing drug use, spitting, loitering, and public urination.
“PLEASE GET THESE MEN OUT OF OUR NEIGHBORHOOD,” Lee Ann Stern wrote in an email to Gothamist, adding she feared being mugged and would no longer let her son walk to the playground alone. When asked about her email, Stern added, “I’m not saying these people don’t deserve a chance. I’m saying I’m sure there are neighborhoods where it would be less controversial. I don’t care about their skin color, or anything other than the drug use.”
While some neighborhoods have seen a disturbing spike in gun violence in recent months, there have been no shootings or murders in the Upper West Side’s 20th Precinct between January 1st and August 2nd, according to the most recent police statistics available. There was a slight increase in the number of robberies, three more compared to last year, up to 43 total. There was a 71 percent increase in burglaries compared to this point last year, up to 84 this year, but declines in the number of felony assaults.
Overall, crime was down 11 percent compared to the first seven months last year, a steeper drop compared to the city overall, according to the NYPD.
Several Upper West Siders opposed to the shelters said they would accept homeless women and children moving into neighborhood hotels, but that they didn’t want people addicted to drugs or sex offenders.
“I think there’s a real risk post-pandemic that for the young families that stuck around and are trying to make it work in the City instead of fleeing to the suburbs, this would drive a lot of young families out of the neighborhood for good,” said Avi Gelboim, 42, who said the men should be moved to “hotels closer to the airports in Queens further removed from areas where you have public schools nearby and so many young families.”
There are 17 registered sex offenders who live in the zip code 10024, according to the state’s registry, 11 of whom live in Belleclaire and the Belnord temporary shelters and six registered sex offenders who live in the zip code not in shelters. State law does not restrict where most registered sex offenders can live; though some people still under parole or probation may be prohibited from living within 1,000 feet of a school or working with children. McGinn, the Homeless Services spokesperson, said the city transferred one person who had such restrictions out of an Upper West Side facility.
Amanda Failk, 42, a white social worker whose husband and son are Black, said she was disturbed by language being used on social media about the shelter residents. She and her son went to deliver cookies to men at the Lucerne and a man who lived across the street started yelling about how the value of his condo would drop because they were there.
“Why are they only concerned about the drug addicts and the sex offenders at that facility, which happens to have a large Black population? Why aren’t they concerned about it at Collegiate, at York, at Columbia, in their Co-op building?” she said. “To say we care about homelessness but we don’t want them here, well, how very separate but equal of you.”
The online vitriol has spilled out onto the streets, and some people living at the shelter said they felt unwelcome. Louis Pastores, a 55-year-old who moved into the Lucerne in late July, said people have been stopping him in the streets asking him what he’s doing there.
“Why do you look at people like that because we are homeless. We’re trying to get on our feet, get our own place. We have no choice. The mayor sent us here,” he said. Pastores said he’d been living in the shelter system for three years and used to install fiber optic cables before he was hit by a car. “They saying, ‘Black lives matter,’ but they don't want Black lives in this area.”
Pietro Palumbo (left) and his friend Louis Pastores live in the Lucerne, an Upper West Side hotel that started housing homeless people in late July.
On the corner in front of the Lucerne, the area’s new residents are on the top of people’s minds as they walk by. Barbara Rockmore, a 69-year-old who managed a medical practice before she lost her job during the COVID-19 pandemic, lives across the street.
“They’re more than homeless, they’re menaces to society,” she said, adding someone tried to smash the glass door to her building over the weekend. “This has nothing to do with the color of these people.”
She said she participated in recent marches against police brutality and thought, “Maybe protesting like we did for George Floyd might be a good idea,” then changed her mind.
“I’m looking and seeing it’s mostly white people,” she said. “That won’t look good for a protest.”
As she was speaking outside the hotel, a 25-year-old man named Klodian passed by. Klodian, who declined to give his last name, said he’d lived in the neighborhood his whole life.
“Frankly, where would they go?” he asked Rockmore, and the two started arguing. “Upper West Siders claim that they're so liberal, that they want to help everybody but then once it’s in their own backyard, they say get them out of here, and that’s ludicrous.”
Another man approached and asked if he could interject. He introduced himself as Geoffrey Smith, a 28-year-old housekeeper who made $18 an hour cleaning hospitals and the Javits Center while it was handling COVID-19 patients, and had been living in the shelter system for 10 months.
“I’m in there. I just ain’t got no family to go to,” he said. “This is just a stepping stone for me and I can’t let anybody spoil it.” Smith said he was trying to qualify for affordable housing through the city’s lottery so he would finally have a place where his one-year-old daughter could visit him. “Nobody sees me. If you look at me you wouldn’t even think I’m in there.”
