Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Too many shelters spoil the neighborhood

From the Daily News:

Local leaders in southeastern Queens say they've had enough of the homeless shelters popping up in their neighborhoods.

City Councilman Leroy Comrie and Community Board 12 are lobbying city officials to stop a shelter for homeless families with children from moving into 170-02 93rd Ave. in Jamaica, a 54-unit apartment building.

The shelter, proposed by the Brooklyn-based nonprofit Housing Bridge, has yet to receive final city approval.

"While we want to try to be helpful and open, this location is absolutely the wrong site," Comrie (D-St. Albans) said. "We have too many vulnerable people in the area already.

"It's right down the block from a senior center," he said. "It's right down the block from a single-parent female shelter."


He plans to meet with city Department of Homeless Services officials within the next few weeks to convince them to shelve the proposal, he said.

Yvonne Reddick, district manager of Community Board 12, said the board is opposed to the shelter because the community has reached its saturation point.

The issue came to a head when a Housing Bridge representative gave a presentation about the facility at a June 16 board meeting.

"We have nothing against the homeless," Reddick said. But "we have more shelters than anyone [else] in Queens County."

Out of the borough's 17 homeless shelters, nine are located within her board, she said. And those are only the shelters that she is aware of.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Homeless families should be sheltered in the communities they lived in. If the children went to school there, they should stay there. If a family received other benefits there they should stay there.

Queens Crapper said...

NYC is set up so that you can come here from Florida or Illinois and be entered into the homeless shelter system that day. What we need is a residency requirement.

Anonymous said...

youre correct crappy. i have been told stories of people coming here from NC and SC bc the bennies are better. aint that sumpin? red states aint so bad after all.

Anonymous said...

NYC is bad when it comes to attracting the homeless, but you should try Vancouver.

When i was our there (fantastic city, BTW), even as a NY-er, i was shocked by the number of homeless around.

I was told by some locals that Vancouver has some of the toughest homeless protection laws in the world. Combined with its warmer weather than the rest of Canada, its a magnet. Plus, cities like Montreal and Edmonton even give one way bus tickets to their homeless to send them to Vancouver!

Anonymous said...

Yeah, lest build shelters in Masbeth, or Bayside, or even Park Slope and Brooklyn Heights. After all, that where they all come from, right?


Oh, wait, they don't.

TAKE CARE OF YOUR OWN COMMUNITY.

These are your people out on the streets. Take them in.


You know, im not a fan of what is becoming of Flushing, but at least they take care of their families. Never see a homeless asian.

In the south queens communities, too many broken families puts people out on the streets.