Close to 20 Percent of NYC Hotels are Housing the Homeless

By Courtney Gross New York City
PUBLISHED 6:33 PM ET Jun. 25, 2020 PUBLISHED 6:33 PM EDT Jun. 25, 2020 UPDATED 10:26 PM ET Jun. 25, 2020

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James Shields wants to get his life back together. 

“It feels like I have my own spot again,” Shields told NY1 earlier this month. "I had my own apartment for like 10 years. Now I am just maintaining and just living my life and hope I can get out of here, be a better person for myself and my daughter."

For now, Shields is staying at a hotel in Manhattan. He has a job at a sushi restaurant. 

He holds the hope of a new apartment, a new life that is much stronger.

“I do think when I get enough money to save up and move out,” Shields said, pausing to wipe tears from his eyes. "I think I will be a better person after I get out of here."

His 15-year-old daughter is in the city’s homeless shelter system. And, even though it may not look like it, Shields is, too. 

His hotel has been temporarily converted to a homeless shelter — a step the city took to stop the spread of Coronavirus. 

Since the virus swept through the city in March, the de Blasio administration has been sending thousands of homeless people from large, crowded shelters to hotels where they can practice social distancing in their own rooms. 

There are about 700 hotels in New York City. One hundred and thirty-nine of them are occupied by homeless people. That means almost 20 percent of the city’s hotels are operating at least, in part, as homeless shelters. Sixty-three of those hotels took in homeless people from the city over the last three months because of COVID-19. It’s unclear when they will leave.

Step inside The Palace on the Bowery and you might see why. Beds are just feet apart. This is the shelter Shields slept in until earlier this month. 

“It was kind of scary to think,' Do I have it?'” he asked. "'Am I going to catch it from someone in there?'”

When COVID-19 hit the five boroughs, it quickly spread in the shelter system. Since March, at least 96 homeless New Yorkers have died from the virus. There are more than 17,000 single homeless adults in the city’s shelter system, and 13,000 are now living in hotels. 

The city’s homeless czar says this is not a permanent policy change.

“The consensus of the city before COVID was commercial hotels were not an appropriate way to shelter people,” said Steven Banks, the head of the city’s Department of Social Services. "We are using this only as a temporary bridge to get back where public health can be appropriately protected in a congregate setting.”

The hotel-turned-shelter is run by the Bowery Residents’ Committee. 

“We’re doing them about one or two a week,” said Muzzy Rosenblatt, CEO and President of the Bowery Residents’ Committee. "It’s a huge undertaking to coordinate and stage and move. It’s not just moving residents and staff, but commuters and files, and records and supplies. It’s everything you need. It’s moving a little community."

Even though the number of moves the city and shelter providers have done over the last three months is massive, the city will not still not disclose a list of the hotels they are using to protect residents’ privacy. We found many hotels on our own. There are at least 30 in Manhattan.

Just go to 36th street. On one side is the SpringHill Suites. You can get a room for $139 on booking.com. It’s full of men from Pamoja House in Brooklyn.

Outside on a recent morning, one described the rooms like this: “Nice queen size bed, flat screen TV. We got cable. It’s better than being over there in the shelter.”

Directly across the street is a DoubleTree. This hotel is full of men from a shelter in the Bronx. 

Head across town to 35th Street. The Kixby is a luxury, boutique hotel with 195 rooms and suites. It’s booked until September because it’s a shelter.

"It’s keeping some cash flow going for the hotels, but we were there. We stepped up when the city had a need," Vijay Dandapani, the leader of the city’s Hotel Association, said. "Why this happened? They are in shelters in a congregate settings that is arguably, or most definitely, not good for them from a pandemic standpoint. So here they are in individual rooms, you are reasonably well-protected from the virus.”

In April, the association landed a $78 million initial contract to find hotels for the homeless. At the time, coronavirus raged across the city. The city’s hotels saw no sign their business would return anytime soon. 

So the booking started.  

Multiple shelter residents living in hotels told NY1 they were told to expect to stay in these new locations for about six months. Banks told us there is no move-out date. 

“We are going to be governed by public health concerns, and at the point at which it is safe to resume operations of congregate shelters and stop using commercial hotels, we will do that,” Banks said. 

Its contract with the hotel association goes through October. The city is expecting the final cost of that contract to grow. Officials could not say by how much. Negotiations are ongoing.

The city has a commitment from FEMA to pay 75 percent of the costs of the hotel rooms. But the extra services, the moves, the staff, that’s all costing taxpayers. 

For now, Shields feels safer, like his life is heading in the right direction. At least in the near future, he has some hope. 

"Are you hopeful now?” we asked him last week.

“I am very hopeful and very grateful now,” Shields said. "They did open my eyes up to a lot of new things."

New York City sees at least 76 homeless people die of coronavirus

At least 76 homeless people have died of coronavirus in New York City so far, the social services agency head said on Monday.

That’s up from the 40 homeless deaths caused by COVID-19 around the same time last month. Fifty-two of the 76 deaths were living in single adult shelters that tend to be large and dorm-like.

Social Services Commissioner Steve Banks said 31 agency staffers have also died of coronavirus, in addition to an unknown number of workers at outside providers contracted by the city who have perished.

City homeless shelters have seen 961 confirmed coronavirus cases as of May 15, according to testimony Banks gave at a remote Council hearing Monday.

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Of those, 658 were in single adults residing in 98 different shelters and 152 were at assessment sites, either caught in people at the front door or those who connected to care before getting any ongoing shelter placement.

The city has moved thousands of homeless people from crowded shelters to commercial hotels to curb the spread of coronavirus and allow those who may be infected to isolate.

Nine thousand of the 17,000 single adults living in city shelters now reside in commercial hotel rooms, including 3,500 who were staying in them before the pandemic. To house the homeless, the city is now paying $129 a night per room.

The city aims to relocate a thousand people a week from congregate shelters to hotel rooms until widespread testing is available as part of Mayor de Blasio’s plan to contain the virus.

NYC homeless shelter in revolt over unsanitary coronavirus conditions

Residents at a city homeless shelter on Randall’s Island are in revolt over what they say are unsanitary living conditions creating a hotbed for COVID-19.

Former resident Alfonzo Forney, 41, who claims several men at the Clarke Thomas shelter have come down with the virus, is circulating a petition signed by dozens who live in the shelter demanding new management.

On March 28, the petition reads, “the resident in bed 1055 … was taken out by ambulance, exhibiting various symptoms of COVID-19.” It goes on to accuse safety director [John] Bradley of allowing three people to stay in the same bed before it was decontaminated.

Roy Coleman, 69, another resident who was diagnosed with coronavirus at Harlem Hospital this week, was sent back to the shelter after his condition was known and spent the night there before being discharged, he told The Post. Coleman said he was eventually given a Metrocard by the shelter and told to make his way to a Marriott in Long Island City — a hotel providing temporary housing to homeless New Yorkers with coronavirus.

“You don’t send a person like that who is COVID-19 positive on the bus or a train,” Forney said.

A Department of Homeless Services police officer at Clarke Thomas told the Post that neither the city nor shelter has provided them with any personal protective equipment and that soap and hand sanitizer were nonexistent in the facility (outside staff offices).

“The PPE I have now, was supplied by another officer,” the cop said.

A rep for Clake Thomas disputed allegations from Forney and others saying an internal investigation “found those claims to be without merit.”

By Jon Levine

NY Post

April 11, 2020 

How Shelter Chaos Drives Many Homeless to Live on Streets and in Subways

The night Jeffrey Wolford came in off the frigid sidewalk seeking warmth in Manhattan’s 30th Street Men’s Shelter last winter, it was too late to get a bed.

He was assigned a plastic chair, alongside 20 other men already dozing in the city’s biggest shelter, a major intake center for homeless people.

Just as he was nodding off, he looked down and saw a man rifling through his backpack, trying to steal his phone.

The two were wrestling on the floor when a shelter supervisor intervened. Wolford says he explained the attempted phone theft. But the supervisor told the thief to take a seat — and ordered Wolford back out into the cold.

Disgusted, he grabbed his belongings and ventured back out into the pre-dawn Arctic chill.

“Sleeping in the streets is preferable to that,” said Wolford, 33.

City Hall’s last official count in January found more than 3,500 homeless people on sidewalks or in the subways on a night when the temperature plummeted to 28 degrees.

Mayor Bill de Blasio Photo: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY

Last week, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced plans to train 18,000 city workers to call 311 when they see a homeless person to get more folks into city shelters, which house about 60,000 New Yorkers.

“The problem here is not (that) we don’t have a place to get someone that’s safe and where we can get them mental health services and substance misuse services, we have that,” he said. “It’s getting people to come in.”

But as winter approaches, homeless people living on the streets, in interview after interview, told THE CITY they’d rather take their chances on trains or sidewalks.

Dangers Loom All Over

The myriad dangers facing them are underscored by a recent spate of killings of homeless people. That includes the Oct. 5 beating deaths of four men sleeping on the streets of Chinatown — allegedly by a man twice arrested for committing crimes inside city shelters.

On Nov. 5, a homeless man allegedly fatally stabbed another homeless man outside an East Elmhurst, Queens, shelter. Four days later, a similar killing took place inside an Upper West Side shelter.

A memorial for Chuen Kwok, one of four homeless men murdered while sleeping on the street in Chinatown last month. Photo: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY

Amid this violent landscape, THE CITY zeroed in on the shelter where Wolford says he was accosted and is often cited by homeless people as a place to avoid: the 30th Street Men’s Shelter in Kips Bay.

Our review of nearly 3,000 pages of internal records of dangerous and criminal activity inside 30th Street in 2017 and 2018 found:

• Serious incidents — such as assaults, death threats and possession of significant quantities of drugs — won’t necessarily get someone arrested or even kicked out.

• Violations of shelter rules often go without punishment.

• Repeat offenders have no trouble bedding down for the night in a shelter, even after multiple incidents in various city-run facilities. That was the case with the man accused of the Chinatown killings.

Reports Paint Grim Picture

The internal reports depict life inside 30th Street as teetering on the brink of anarchy at times: A client openly smokes crack in bed. Another runs from room to room, flicking light switches.

One resident whacks another in the head with a lock stuffed inside a sock. A handgun is hidden in a construction barrier just outside the building’s entrance.

Brass knuckles, stun guns, a hammer — all found inside lockers. An entire section of the shelter is known for “high drug activity.”

In April 2016, one 30th Street resident fatally slit the throat of another. In 2017 and 2018, the NYPD launched several drug sweeps to shut down rampant dealing.

Bellevue Hospital Photo: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY

At times, when residents commit violence against each other or staff — even against City Department of Homeless Services police — and there’s an arrest. But sometimes, there is no arrest.

Often that’s because the client is deemed to be mentally ill and is shipped off as an “EDP” — police-speak for “emotionally disturbed person” — to nearby Bellevue or Beth Israel hospital.

The reports obtained by THE CITY offer numerous examples of incidents that ended with an EDP designation — but without an arrest or summons.

In one instance, a shelter client who tried to push his way into an elevator past a security guard refused an order to stop — then kicked and bit a DHS police officer. Another client threw hot coffee on a staffer, burning the worker’s ankle.

Extended Shelter Stays

The 30th Street Shelter sits inside an intimidating 19th century red-brick fortress next to Bellevue Hospital. The huge shelter holds 851 beds and houses only single men.

As one of several intake facilities around the city, it serves as the gateway to the shelter system for tens of thousands of homeless men each year. Residents are supposed to stay temporarily until they can be sent to shelters around the city.

The 30th Street Men’s Shelter Photo: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY

But the number of single men seeking shelter has risen recently, to more than 16,200 one night last week, while the quantity of available beds has not kept up. So 30th Street residents often spend months there before the Department of Homeless Services is able to find them a spot elsewhere.

As of last month, more than half the shelter residents had been living in a bureaucratic purgatory at 30th Street for an average of nearly 10 months.

‘The Worst Reputation’

“The 30th Street Men’s Shelter has the worst reputation of any men’s shelter in the city,” said Josh Dean, director of Human NYC, a non-profit homeless support group. “The quality varies from shelter to shelter, but the intake and assessment shelters are the shelters that are notoriously dangerous. And those are the shelters that are discouraging people from entering the system.”

Giselle Routhiere, policy director at the Coalition for the Homeless, a nonprofit that has long labored to reform the city’s shelter system, agreed that 30th Street — in part because of its size — has long been considered the most dangerous shelter in the system.

She called the mayor’s assertion the system is safe “total bulls–t.”

“All of the problems that happen throughout the system are extreme at places like 30th Street. You can understand the reticence of people to go to places like that,” she said. “The idea that intake shelters are more chaotic is true.”

Number of homeless in NYC shelters hits record high: Report

Gov. Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio both got failing grades in the Coalition for the Homeless’ annual report.

A report released Tuesday by a homeless advocacy group found that the city saw a record number of people — nearly 64,000 — living in homeless shelters in January. The Coalition for the Homeless’ report concluding that if the city and state don’t affect significant changes, that number could go up by 5,000 in the next three years.

The annual State of the Homeless report gave both Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Bill de Blasio failing grades for providing inadequate new affordable housing to accommodate the growing needs of New York City residents. The report also noted there were 18,212 single adults residing in shelters in February — a 150% jump since 2009.

Giselle Routhier, the policy director for the Coalition for the Homeless, said the mayor could enact several policy changes to address the challenge, including building at least 24,000 subsidized affordable units and setting aside 6,000 units for homeless households. 

"New York City’s homelessness crisis will not improve until the mayor uses every tool at his disposal,” she said in a statement.

The report projects that the city will see an additional 5,000 residents in city shelters by 2022. The coalition recommends the mayor increase the city’s shelter capacity to keep vacancy rates above 3% for each shelter population. The Nonprofit also called on the governor to reverse state cuts to the city’s homeless shelter program. 

Jane Meyer, a spokesman for the mayor’s office, said the administration is taking several steps to curb the homeless population by providing housing assistance and creating new affordable housing units. Meyer also said the city is planning to open 43 new shelters across the five boroughs. 

"More than 109,000 New Yorkers (since 2014) have received rehousing assistance to move out of or avoid shelter and we have financed over 10,200 homes for homeless New Yorkers," she said in a statement.

The governor’s office, in response to the report, shrugged off the findings and pointed to the state’s minimum wage increase, a $200 million effort to combat addiction, and ongoing affordable housing efforts.

"We know it’s the job of advocates to put their best case forward, but let’s be intellectually honest," spokesman Richard Azzopardi said in a statement. "Fighting homelessness requires a holistic approach."

NYC’S BIGGEST SHELTER PLAGUED BY ASBESTOS AND OTHER DANGERS

The day after the Fourth of July, 2018, the city evacuated eight homeless men from their beds at Manhattan’s 30th Street Men’s Shelter and moved them elsewhere inside the cavernous facility.

Their third-floor dorm room was padlocked and sealed off with tape.

The reason for the drastic step: asbestos discovered where the men had been sleeping. The carcinogen also was found in a sixth-floor electrical closet near several other dorm rooms, and in a then-unused ninth-floor room, according to Department of Homeless Services (DHS) records.

All three rooms were closed and clean-up began. At one point, the city’s environmental agency ordered the work halted after receiving an anonymous tip that the job wasn’t being done properly. The rooms were subsequently cleared of asbestos and reopened.

It wasn’t the building’s last bout with asbestos — and asbestos isn’t the only unsafe condition afflicting the nation’s biggest homeless shelter, THE CITY found.

A review of city, state and court records reveals an aging structure plagued by serious fire safety violations, collapsing ceilings and elevators that frequently break down.

Inspectors in the last two years have cited the building for more than 100 code violations — 75 of which remained open as of last week, records show. Documents also detail serious incidents — including a homeless man losing the tip of a finger to a window that slammed onto the digit.

Plumbing work in the building, which has suffered repeated hot water outages, had to be stopped after the DHS staff plumber doing work there was caught claiming to have performed plumbing and fire safety inspections on other jobs that he hadn’t done. The plumber made more than $230,000 in 2016 alone, records show.

Meanwhile, homeless men who spend weeks and often months at 30th Street endure an atmosphere of persistent violence, recently reported on by THE CITY. Internal documents showed assaults, threats and drug dealing as constant problems.

Shutdown Plan Scrapped

Opened in 1933, the 400,000 square-foot nine-story building originally housed Bellevue Hospital’s psychiatric ward. The city turned the space into a huge shelter for single men after the ward moved to the new Bellevue Hospital next door in 1984.

Two decades later, the Bloomberg administration announced plans to shut the shelter and replace it with three smaller centers within two years. At one point, the city Economic Development Corp. even solicited proposals to turn the building into a luxury hotel.

But the plan was abandoned as the number of homeless New Yorkers rose citywide from about 31,000 in 2006 to 51,000 by the time Bloomberg left office in 2013. Last week, the figure was holding steady around 62,000, according to statistics kept by the Coalition for the Homeless.

Amid the city’s unceasing need to house the homeless, the 30th Street shelter remains open, serving as the entry point for single homeless men seeking lodging. The facility, undergoing a $42 million renovation, provides up to 850 beds on any given night.

Meanwhile, DHS is forced to confront a seemingly never-ending string of unsafe conditions inside the sprawling facility on a piecemeal basis, moving residents within the building as workers attack one problem after another.

That upgrading, in turn, has created a new problem: cleaning up the asbestos found on multiple floors throughout the 30th Street shelter that’s kicked up by all the renovating. On a regular basis, dorm rooms have been sealed off and residents moved to other beds within the facility, records show.

Abatement Process Questioned

The July 2018 case stands out because of the involvement of the city Department of Investigation and city Department of Environmental Protection. A July 5 internal report obtained by THE CITY via the Freedom of Information Law states that both agencies advised DHS to lock and seal the affected rooms.

DHS spokesperson Isaac McGinn did not answer questions about why DOI and DEP were involved, but stated in October of that year, a few months into the cleanup, “an anonymous call was placed questioning the (asbestos) removal process” in those rooms.

McGinn said the DEP then issued a stop-work order on the abatement and inspected the shelter “out of an abundance of caution” so DHS “could affirm that the work taking place was appropriate/in accordance with standard.”

The next day, DEP cancelled the stop-work order, and the job resumed, McGinn wrote.
 
DEP did not respond to questions, while Diane Struzzi, a DOI spokesperson, stated, “DOI is aware of the matter and declines further comment.”

Department of Labor Pains

This past August, Coalition for the Homeless staffers visiting 30th Street noticed a section on the seventh floor had been closed off to clients while the room was cleaned of asbestos. In October, the Coalition was told beds were being taken “off-line” because the abatement process requires rooms to be sealed while the clean-up is underway.

Though the law requires building owners to notify the state Department of Labor when performing asbestos abatement, there’s no record the state was told of the July 2018 case or the asbestos cleanup the Coalition witnessed in August.

One notice dates to May 2016, when a vendor was hired to do $45,000 worth of abatement on pipes, caulking, roofing and wire insulation related to elevator upgrades, state records show. That work ended in April 2017.

The only other notice with the state describes $850,000 in asbestos abatement in July 2018 related to upgrading the shelter’s exterior facade and roof. That exterior work is ongoing, records show.

McGinn noted that the presence of asbestos is to be expected in a building that opened in 1933. He emphasized the agency follows all required regulations to ensure that abatement is done properly, although he couldn’t say why the state wasn’t notified about the July 2018 and August interior work.

Top to Bottom Issues

THE CITY’s latest review of records show that the shelter’s physical woes stretch from the cellar to the roof.

During a May 30, 2018, visit to the shelter’s sprawling basement, two Department of Buildings Inspectors — badge numbers 2771 and 2775 — discovered “large chunks of concrete loose,” partially collapsed ceilings throughout and exposed rebar. One inspector noted a “constant flow of water coming from [the] ceiling.” That inspector “could not locate the source of the leak.”

Inspector 2771 issued a simple order: “REPAIR.”

By November 2018 the DOB was forced to take the unusual step of escalating the infraction to the most serious level — Aggravated Offense Level 1 — because the conditions had not been addressed, records show.

And still nothing was done. In April, nearly a year after first discovering the mysterious water leak, Inspector 2771 returned to the cellar to experience deja vu. The inspector’s report once again noted the “flow of water coming from the ceiling.”

The day after Thanksgiving, the inspectors again reissued the “aggravated offense Level 1.” That is where it remained as of last week.

And the cellar is hardly the only problem. On Oct. 25, inspectors found the self-closing fireproof doors throughout the building were “being wedged and propped open.” The Fire Department advises all building owners to install these doors because an open door turns a stairwell into a wind tunnel that feeds fire.

The inspectors also found cracks and shifted bricks throughout the exterior of the roof bulkhead, and discovered emergency lights on stairwells on multiple floors didn’t function when tested. There was no fire-stopping material where pipes passed through walls.

Last week, McGinn said the agency has submitted paperwork to DOB certifying DHS has addressed the cellar issues, the fire doors, the bricks and the emergency lights, along with dozens of other open violations, and are awaiting DOB’s review. McGinn noted the current list of 75 open violations was down from a peak of 233 in January 2016.

A Finger Lost

But the internal reports DHS is required to file with the state show even more dangerous conditions.

Since 2017, these so-called “critical incident reports,” obtained by THE CITY, describe a collapsing window chopping off the tip of a resident’s finger; a knob falling off a shower, causing a flood that took days to mop up; and pre-dawn mattress fire that forced the evacuation of the entire shelter for hours.

Elevators break down, at times trapping residents and staff.

In the last two years, the hot water has repeatedly gone out inside 30th Street, sometimes for days at a time. But in October 2018, plumbing work underway at 30th Street was halted, and DOB notified the shelter it planned to “revoke all approvals and permits” related to work being performed there by a DHS plumber named Treldon McMillan.

McMillan had earned six-figure salaries for years as a DHS plumber, netting $230,359 in 2016. Court records show in September 2018, McMillan pleaded guilty to three “A” misdemeanors after admitting that he’d deliberately filed false statements to the Buildings Department certifying that he’d inspected plumbing and fire safety systems at three residential buildings in Brooklyn.

Following the guilty plea, DOB suspended his license and revoked permits on all his now-suspect work. Last week, the number for McMillan’s plumbing firm was disconnected and he could not be reached for comment.

DHS’ McGinn said McMillan retired in February 2018. As for McMillan’s work at the 30th Street shelter, McGinn stated, “During the course of continued repair and renovation work, we continue to review the materials produced by Mr. McMillan to ensure they meet relevant standards.”

By Greg B. Smith@GREGBSMITHNYC

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FROM SHELTER TO HOME TO STREET: ONE MAN’S HOMELESS STRUGGLE

By Claudia Irizarry Aponte@CLAUIRIZARRY

By official measure of the city Department of Homeless Services, Karim Walker is a success story because he landed a permanent apartment after living in a shelter.

Yet just two years later, he’s sleeping in subways and spending days in Manhattan libraries.

“I just can’t catch a break,” Walker said in a recent interview at the Pret a Manger in Penn Station, fighting back tears.

“I need people to know what happened to me,” said Walker, who described himself as a college graduate with longtime dreams of becoming a doctor. “Because it just isn’t right.”

Walker’s journey from having a home to living in a shelter to permanent housing to the street despite repeated support from city programs highlights the challenge Mayor Bill de Blasio is tackling with Outreach NYC — a new effort to coordinate multiple agencies’ efforts to help thousands of unsheltered homeless.

In Walker’s case, the Department of Social Services — which includes the Department of Homeless Services and Human Resources Administration — took on his case. City personnel and contractors secured him shelter, a job, a housing voucher and an apartment.

But Walker barely gained a grip on the benefits before each slipped away.

“Karim’s story is unfortunately quite common,” said Caroline Gottlieb, an attorney with the Civil Justice Practice of Brooklyn Defender Services, who represented Walker. “Individuals living in shelters face enormous hurdles when trying to secure housing stability.”

Now, the tall 38-year-old takes refuge underground, where he feels safer than in notoriously dangerous shelters. Said Walker, “They’re another arm of the penitentiary.”

Temporary Home

Walker lived in men’s homeless shelters in Brooklyn, The Bronx and Manhattan after crossing the river from his native New Jersey in 2015. He’d lost a job at Newark Airport and hoped he’d have a better shot at assistance in New York.

Thanks to a Human Resources Administration work program, Walker got a contract job with Legends Hospitality serving food at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, earning minimum wage.

A caseworker at the Eddie Harris Men’s Shelter in Brooklyn connected him with an apartment in East New York, in the summer of 2017.

Karim Walker said he spends part of his time studying math and coding in public libraries since becoming homeless. Photo: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY

When Walker toured the building, he thought it was “sketchy.” But he was desperate to leave the shelter, run by Bushwick Economic Development Corp. That fall, DHS ordered BEDCO to surrender its apartments and hotel shelters after two toddler sisters died when a radiator valve exploded at one of its Bronx facilities in 2016.

Walker relented. “Where in New York are there apartments left that cost $800 a month?” he asked.

He paid about $328 a month out of pocket, and the city paid the rest.

The system was working. Walker counted in the Mayor’s Management Report as one of 4,157 “single adults exiting to permanent housing” that year.

Walker also did not count as one of the roughly 17% of adult shelter residents “who exited to permanent housing and returned to the DHS shelter services system within one year,” because he remained in the apartment beyond his first anniversary of moving in.

But Walker’s days in the brick rowhouse on Vermont Street were numbered. Even though the building passed a Department of Homeless Services inspection, he said his apartment was plagued by vermin, leaks and exposed electrical outlets.

Mold and sewage backup covered his bathtub, he said — forcing him to wear shoes whenever he showered.

“Ensuring clients are connected to safe apartments as they get back on their feet is our number one priority and we provide staff with clear standards and guidance regarding the reviews they must complete for our rehousing programs,” said Isaac McGinn, a spokesperson for the Human Resources Administration.

The tub in Walker’s East New York apartment. Photo: Karim Walker

“All units that clients may seek to move into through our rental assistance programs must pass our required reviews, which include a walkthrough by trained staff, including DHS and provider staff, and our comprehensive Apartment Review Checklist,” McGinn added.

Just a year after he’d moved in, the owners informed Walker they did not intend to renew his lease.

Income Gained, Voucher Lost

Soon Walker’s means to pay for any apartment would evaporate.

A statewide minimum wage hike at the end of 2017 boosted his hourly pay to $13 an hour, up from $11. In June 2018, he received notification from HRA that he now earned too much at his job to keep his rent voucher.

Later that year, the Human Resources Administration increased the income limits for voucher renewals to 250% of the federal poverty level in an attempt to prevent a sudden loss of benefits.

Jacquelyn Simone, a policy analyst at the Coalition for the Homeless, said that such measures to keep once-homeless people housed are essential.

“We want to ensure that when people are fortunate enough to leave homelessness behind, that they are not ever in the situation where they have to experience the trauma of homelessness a second time, or a third time, or a fourth time,” said Simone.

“When you have one person falling back into homelessness and ending up back on the street, that has to be prevented.”

House of Cards

From there, the house of cards case managers helped Walker build came crashing down.

With assistance from an attorney from Brooklyn Defender Services, Walker filed a complaint in Housing Court to force his landlord to make repairs, while exercising his right to withhold rent.

“I didn’t do that to be spiteful,” Walker said. “I just wanted a clean, safe place to live that was up to code.”

He won a court order in October 2018 demanding the landlords make his apartment habitable. Weeks later, just before Thanksgiving, Walker found himself on the receiving end of an eviction notice, for remaining without a lease.

In between, Legends Hospitality did not renew Walker’s contract. He was out of a job, and almost out of his home.

Earlier this year, he turned to HRA’s Homebase homelessness prevention program. He obtained what the agency calls a “shopping letter,” informing potential landlords that he was eligible for a voucher. But he didn’t find a place before the letter expired four months later.

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Walker, meanwhile, held on at his East New York apartment until this past August, when the sheriff locked him out and the new landlord threw out his possessions — leaving him with a Social Security card and birth certificate as his only documents.

Walker turned again to Homebase. A worker at the office on Livonia Avenue, he said, told him the only way to get another voucher was to move into a shelter.

He opted instead for the subway. One recent weekend, when the mercury dipped into the 20s, his boots were stolen while he slept in a Brooklyn-bound 2 train, Walker said.

18,000 Eyes on the Street

In his announcement last week, de Blasio committed to train 18,000 existing city workers to help coax homeless people to accept shelter and services — “and get people off the streets once and for all.”

A new “war room” will coordinate response between multiple agencies, building on efforts the mayor said have already helped 2,200 people.

“We know we don’t have everything we wish we had, but we do have the power of all these agencies and all the good people who work for them,” he said.

“We believe that constantly engaging folks is the answer,” de Blasio added. “And I want everyone to understand, I’m not talking about a few times and not talking about a few dozen times. Sometimes we were talking about hundreds of times before it works.”

Walker, though, has one plea for the mayor: “Just build more housing.”

From Sunrise to Sunset: The Long School Days of Homeless Students

By Eliza Shapiro, Brittainy Newman/The New York Times

• Nov. 19, 2019

My reporting does not often begin before dawn. But on a couple of chilly mornings last month, I set out around 5 a.m. through mostly deserted streets into the far reaches of Queens and Brooklyn to meet two children who I hoped would bring the story of an enormous student homelessness crisis to life.

I cover the New York City school system and have been reporting on student homelessness for years. The number of school-aged children in temporary housing has ballooned by more than 70 percent over the past decade. I knew that the best way for readers to understand this tragedy playing out in plain sight would be to introduce them to children who are living through it.

I spent about a month searching for families who would be willing to let me and Brittainy Newman, a photography fellow at the Times, shadow them for a day. I called the principals of schools with high homeless populations whom I had built relationships with, and reached out to advocacy groups that help families find services and busing to school.

Then I found Sherine and Maria. Sherine and three of her children live in a shelter in Jamaica, Queens. Maria and her five children share a single room. Both were incredibly warm and gracious, and said they would be happy to let us into their lives for a day if it meant the article could help other families in situations like theirs. Sherine’s son, Darnell, 8, goes to a school 15 miles from where they live. Maria’s 10-year-old daughter, Sandivel, attends a school where nearly half the students are homeless.

I got permission from both of the schools’ principals, who wanted to show us what it takes to run a school where somewhere between a third and a half of the students are homeless. They are operating on shoestring budgets and are desperate to raise awareness about the problem. They said they needed more guidance counselors, social workers and other support staff focused on students’ well-being.

So Brittainy and I showed up in Jamaica and watched dozens of students board buses to far-off schools in the dark, while we waited for Darnell to wake up. We stood outside of Sandivel’s house, along with our colleague from the Metro desk, Andrea Salcedo, who spoke to Maria in Spanish and translated for us. Before the light in Sandivel’s bedroom turned on, I saw her eyes shining in the darkness, peeking out onto the sidewalk to get a glimpse of us.

We rode the subway with these families, and learned more about all that the mothers had been through. Both are survivors of domestic violence and victims of a housing crisis that has transformed New York in recent years. They are two of the most organized, patient people I have met in the over six years that I have been on this beat.

Once we arrived at school, we tried to fade into the background as much as possible. At one point, in Darnell’s English class, Brittainy folded herself into a closet meant for backpacks to get a good angle of Darnell. I could barely see her, but I heard the clicks of her camera. When Darnell got into a fight with another student, the guidance counselor welcomed us into his office to show us how he tries to de-escalate conflicts.

We sat with Sandivel and her friends at lunch in her school’s cramped cafeteria, and watched them make lists of the boys they had crushes on. At recess, some of the children wanted to show us how adept they were at hanging from the monkey bars. While I was taking notes, I looked up and noticed that Brittainy was standing on the top of a slide to get a good shot.

Following these children from sunrise to sunset required a serious amount of stamina, and made clear how much it takes for these students to just get through a day. We were yawning by lunchtime, when the children’s school days had barely begun.

What will stay with me the most from the days I spent with these two children are the small but exquisite moments of lightness.

While we passed over the Manhattan Bridge on the subway ride home, Sandivel gave me a tour of the places she would like to visit most. “I want to go on a boat that passes the Statue of Liberty,” she said, pointing across the East River. “I wouldn’t mind going to South Ferry,” she added.

And after football practice, Darnell and his siblings heard a car blasting Stevie Wonder’s popular song “Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours” out of its open windows. The children danced the whole way down the sidewalk.

‘I Know the Struggle’: Why a Pizza Mogul Left Pies at Memorials to 4 Homeless Men

By Michael Wilson

• Oct. 11, 2019

Candles, flowers and handwritten tributes flow onto the sidewalk like surf filling a void in the sand, replacing the body just taken away. Memorials in Chinatown this week marked the spots where four homeless men were killed on Saturday, their heads smashed while they slept by an attacker wielding a metal bar.

But something else was left at the sites. Fresh boxes of hot pizza were stacked at each memorial. And with them, a note. “I wish with all my heart,” it read, “that I could have been there at that very moment to protect all of you guys.”

The author added, “you know me as the pizza guy.” Then he revealed something from his own past: “As a former homeless man, I know the struggle that all of you guys went through every day.”

The pizzas and notes came from Hakki Akdeniz, a 39-year-old immigrant who has built a small chain of pizza shops in the city and, with it, something of an unofficial, but solid, support network for the homeless in Manhattan. His visits to the memorials this week, each time lugging a stack of pizzas that reached his chin, follow a remarkable journey even in a city built on rags-to-riches tales.

Mr. Akdeniz is Kurdish, was raised in Turkey and emigrated to Canada as a young man. Back in Turkey, he had worked in cafes making lahmacun, flattened dough topped with spiced meat, and he aspired to make its Western cousin, pizza, in the United States.

He arrived by bus in New York in 2001 with $240 in his pocket and a promise of a bed at a friend’s apartment. When the friend changed his mind, Mr. Akdeniz moved into a dingy motel on 42nd Street and watched his meager savings dribble away at $30 a night.

Broke, he spent a few nights huddled with his bags in Grand Central Terminal. Someone pointed him to the Bowery Mission, one of the city’s most well-known homeless shelters, in the heart of the city’s skid row.

“I stayed there for 96 nights,” Mr. Akdeniz said. He busied himself in the kitchen, chopping onions and washing dishes, and he looked for work making pizza. His English was poor. He noticed a woman at the mission reading a Turkish language newspaper, and she helped him find a listing for a job at a Mediterranean pizza shop in Hoboken, N.J., near the PATH station.

He showed up in New Jersey in unwashed clothes. The owner was skeptical. “He thought I was so dirty, unclean,” recalled Mr. Akdeniz. Desperate, he asked, “Can I make a pizza?”

“I was shaking, so nervous,” he said. “It came out no good. I said, ‘Can I make another one?’”

After a few failed attempts, the owner hired him — to wash dishes. That night Mr. Akdeniz slept on a bench across from the restaurant, returning early the next day. The next night, he slept in the basement of the pizza shop’s building.

Later that week, the cook gave him a tip. There was a building in Sunnyside, Queens, where the super had an assistant who did odd jobs and lived rent-free in the basement. The assistant was looking for an assistant — same perks. “The boiler room, you can sleep in the corner,” Mr. Akdeniz was told.

A year later, he had saved enough to move into an apartment with a roommate. He got a new job in early 2003 washing dishes at a restaurant on Ninth Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen. On St. Patrick’s Day, the regular pizza maker didn’t show up to work, and Mr. Akdeniz was promoted on the spot.

He spent five years there, improving his skills. In 2009, he found a tiny pizza shop in the Lower East Side that was for sale. He had saved up $40,000 by then, and the shop — just an oven with a counter in front of it — cost twice that, but the owner agreed to sell, setting up monthly payments.

Mr. Akdeniz immediately fell behind in his first month, then his second and third. The man he owed told him, “Pay me, or I’ll put you in the oven.” Little did the man know that, to save money, Mr. Akdeniz was already sleeping under that oven, locked inside the shop every night until another worker opened a padlocked gate the next day.

Then, a breakthrough. Mr. Akdeniz entered a pizza-making contest in 2010 at the Javits Center. To stand out, he threw and spun his pizza dough after setting it on fire. He won first place.

He was featured in a cover article in PMQ Pizza Magazine, which gave him thousands of copies that he handed out outside schools in the neighborhood near his shop. The teenagers laughed and called him “Champ,” but they bought slices, too.

“It became just busy — busy, busy, busy,” he said.

He paid off the shop. He heard of another one for sale nearby, on Rivington Street, and he made an offer that was accepted. Now with two places, he figured he needed a brand name, and he thought of the nickname the teenagers had given him. He named his two shops Champion Pizza.

He bought a third place, then a fourth. He improved his ingredients, making his dough extra light and importing organic sauce from Naples. He bought a fifth place, then a sixth, stretching out to Soho, Union Square and Columbus Circle. His seventh, which opened last year, is near the building in Queens and his old corner in the basement.

Along the way, he became something of a pizza celebrity, known for his flashy acrobatics in tossing and twirling dough, flaming or otherwise, and for building giant pizzas. He has won international pizza making competitions, and his Instagram account has 3.5 million followers.

While building this small pizza empire, Mr. Akdeniz never forgot his time among the homeless. He passed out free slices to street people who came around asking. Eventually he started a weekly food and clothing handout on a stretch of sidewalk on West 34th Street.

His outreach extended beyond pizza. He found a nearby barbershop that agreed to cut homeless men’s hair, and a gymnasium that was willing to let them use its showers. He paid both for their services. He also regularly distributed pizzas to the homeless in Chinatown and the Lower East Side, becoming known among them as the “pizza guy.”

Last weekend, he was having a meal with friends when he learned that four men had been bludgeoned to death in Chinatown and that the police believed the killer was another homeless man. Deeply shaken, he had to excuse himself.

“How could you?” he asked in the interview. He pointed to a man sleeping on the sidewalk nearby. “That guy over there, how could you kill him?”

On Wednesday, Mr. Akdeniz and one of his employees carried 16 small boxes of pizza to a waiting Uber, and placed them in the trunk, before making the short journey to 2 Bowery, where one of the victims was killed.

He placed several boxes on the ground next to a row of candles, removing the empty ones from his previous visits. A passing man pushing a shopping cart stopped, and Mr. Akdeniz handed him a pizza box.

In large letters, its cover read “Champion Pizza,” and below, in smaller print, “Made in New York With Love.”

Michael Wilson has been a reporter and columnist at The Times since 2002, writing stories for the New York, National, International and Arts pages. @MWilsonNYT

6th Annual ‘Karen Stedman’ Walk for Warmth on October 6th, 2019

Hello Everyone!

We had an awesome day for our 6th Annual ‘Karen Stedman’ Walk for Warmth on October 6th, 2019. (this year we have officially renamed our walk after the late Karen Stedman, a very big supporter of our program).

Over twenty five hearty people (including two youngsters) and 2 small dogs participated in the 6th Annual Karen Stedman Walk for Warmth.

Not everyone made the whole walk but everyone was game.

We started at Wesley house and proceeded down 5th Avenue to Bay Ridge 

We picked up the ferry from Owl's Head park and had a cool trip to pier 11 in Manhattan.

Heading south, we walked around the horn of lower Manhattan hugging the West side all the way to Chelsea.

From Chelsea, we picked up the High Line and then walked to midtown to eat a late lunch.

We garnered interest in our project and explained about The Sleeping Bag Project NYC all along the way.

The day was glorious but there were hints of fall and eventually  winter.
We already have calls for our sleeping bags.

Thank you to all the participants whether by walking or donating.

Bless you all.

Jody