Here's why they're opening homeless shelters everywhere

From the Daily News:

The Port Authority plans to evict the city's largest homeless drop-in center to make room for an extension of the No. 7 subway, city officials said.

The Open Door shelter must leave its spot on W. 41st St. behind the Port Authority Bus Terminal at the end of March, said Robert Hess, commissioner of the Department of Homeless Services.

Hess said the authority wanted the center vacated earlier, but he asked the bus terminal's general manager for a brief reprieve so the homeless men and women wouldn't get kicked out during winter.

"He agreed to modify his construction schedule to accommodate us through the end of March," Hess said.

Hess said the city would find new spots for the 200 people who visit the center each day by adding beds to synagogues and churches that provide shelter. The shelter will not reopen elsewhere.

From the NY Post:

243 residents, merchants, and elected officials came to the Westchester Square Public Library on Saturday, September 12 for an “organizational meeting” to fight a new homeless shelter at 1564 St. Peter’s Avenue. Residents said it opened at night without conducting saturation analysis hearings or community board notification because of a Department of Homeless Services self-proclaimed “state of emergency.”

DHS has a day-by-day agreement to operate the shelter in a recently constructed apartment building that includes 38 units. 11 homeless families have already moved in. The city is paying Basic Housing, Inc. $90 per day to house each family, but has no contract for this location, possibly violating the City Charter. The shelter is one of 22 social service providers in Westchester Square-Zerega’s 40 square blocks.

Hundreds believe the neighborhood is oversaturated with similar facilities, driving down property values, and forcing middle-class families to leave because of a lack of market-rate rents. Councilman Jimmy Vacca presided over the meeting.

And from the SI Advance:

The St. George Civic Association joined with Fort Place residents yesterday in suing Manhattan-based Saint Vincent Catholic Medical Centers to stop it from converting a former convent on Fort Place into 59 apartments for the mentally ill.

The suit, filed in Richmond County Supreme Court, charges that SVCMC engaged in taxpayer fraud and violated zoning and building codes in pushing forward with the plan, which the lawsuit also says is unfair not only to current Fort Place residents but to the people who would occupy the converted convent at 78 Fort Pl.

SVCMC president and CEO Henry J. Amoroso told the Advance last year that his organization promised to offer to sign a "good neighbor" agreement with the community, ensuring that only stable and vigorously screened people with mental illness would get apartments -- not drug addicts, sex offenders or newly released prisoners.

The complaint argues that the proposal to convert the convent violates zoning codes and is not grandfathered in under law, as SVCMC had argued. The suit also says SVCMC used state funding to pay for lobbying efforts and public relations, and it asks for the convent property to revert to the state for the public's use.

So with all the Catholic schools and hospitals closing and the nuns' residences being set up as SROs, you can bet there will be a lot more of these places popping up.

Just ask the people in Elmhurst who are still facing the possibility that one will open in their backyard.