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For months on end last year, residents protesting a planned homeless shelter in Queens struggled to get somebody — anybody — at Mayor Bill de Blasio’s City Hall to hear their argument that enough was enough.
The neighborhoods of Queens Community Board 3 — covering East Elmhurst, Jackson Heights and North Corona — already hosted four shelters, and several hotels within the district were temporarily housing homeless individuals during the pandemic.
Behind the scenes, LGA Hospitality LLC, the owners of the property, fought back, hiring a politically wired lobbyist firm, James Capalino Associates, to move the project along, obtain all required permits and roll over local resistance.
Today the shelter, located at 112-16 Astoria Boulevard near LaGuardia Airport, is scheduled to open soon, but local leaders are now hoping for a more sympathetic ear from de Blasio’s successor, Mayor Eric Adams. As Queens Community Board 3 Chairperson Frank Taylor put it, “We’re happy to have the new administration and we’re hopeful.”
There might be a problem with that.
The key portal to City Hall for neighborhood residents is the Mayor’s Community Affairs Unit (CAU), the division within the Mayor’s Office that helps citizens and community boards navigate the city’s bureaucracy. CB3 worked with de Blasio’s CAU on the shelter issue and planned to do so with Adams’ team.
In January, however, Mayor Adams named as his new commissioner of CAU Fred Kreizman — one of the lobbyists who had been retained by the shelter builder, LGA Hospitality LLC, to seek support from City Hall.
“Wow,” Taylor said when told of Kreizman’s dual roles. “Anytime we’re going into these things, we’re apprehensive because of what has happened. We’ve not been listened to. The only thing we can do is that this administration, if that gentleman has that type of connection, what else can we do but fight? And let the community know why are Black and brown neighborhoods being overburdened with these shelters?”
4 comments:
We need to send these homeless people back to their own states or countries where they come from. It was proven that 1/2 of all the homeless on our streets, do not come from nyc. And instead of creating homeless shelters, we should be building another long term mental hospital for these people. Or build more mental hospitals upstate so that these people can get the real help that they need. Building homeless shelters is obviously not helping anyone. Send the homeless back to their original states or countries and fix the mental health and drug problems instead.
Tammany Hall is back!
@Tammay Hall is back!
IT NEVER LEFT!
@"We need to send these homeless people back to their own states or countries where they come from"
Time for you to go back then. It's been nice knowing ya!
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