Mario Cuomo's daughter's homeless shelter closes down

Gothamist

A notorious homeless shelter on Wards Island with ties to former Gov. Andrew Cuomo's sister has quietly closed following years of complaints about conditions.

The 200-bed HELP-USA facility for men with mental illness — formerly run by Cuomo's sister, Maria Cuomo Cole — was shut down in December despite a record number of people staying in city homeless shelters. There were more than 70,000 people in the shelter system Wednesday night, according to official data.

A spokesperson for HELP-USA — which the former governor founded more than 30 years ago — confirmed the closure. Cuomo Cole serves on HELP’s board of directors and describes herself as chair emeritus. The nonprofit operates three other shelters on Wards Island.

“Unfortunately, due to concerns with the building infrastructure, we were forced to close the site at the end of 2022,” HELP spokesperson Stephen Mott said.

The organization’s five-year, $65 million contract with the city to operate the shelter was due to expire in June, according to city comptroller records.

Crumbling conditions at the 13-story Meyer building earned the shelter the distinction of being one of the worst in New York City.

Shelter inspection reports issued by the Coalition for the Homeless revealed frequent heat outages, The City reported in 2019.

In 2021, a resident was stuck in a broken elevator at the building for four nights.

The barracks-style shelter on an isolated island served by a single bus line was especially tough for people with mental illness, Legal Aid attorney Joshua Goldfein said.

“This place was barely fit for human habitation, in addition to being inaccessible and terribly located,” he said.

Goldfein described a litany of problems, including drafty windows that HELP-USA attempted to address by covering them with plexiglass. But the quick fix cut off ventilation in the shared dormitories, a problem reported by Curbed in 2021. Elevators in the “fortress-like” building were only accessible by stairs, limiting access for people in wheelchairs or with other mobility issues, Goldfein added.

Mott, HELP-USA’s chief strategy officer, said all of the sleeping areas and common spaces in the shelter had air conditioning units that operated well.

He said residents were moved to permanent housing and other shelters throughout the city. The Department of Homeless Services said the closure was planned, but did not provide specifics about where residents were placed. An spokesperson for the agency said it has no plans to reopen the facility as a shelter.

Andre D-Nyse, a former resident of the facility, told Gothamist that staff and fellow residents frequently brought weapons. Shelter staff, he said, also used pepper spray on people.

“People have weapons and be hurting people in their sleep,” D-Nyse said in a text message. “I can’t live like this no more… I’m moving to the street as soon as it gets warmer out.”

 

Hevesi's son is pissing off Mario's son regarding donations from his sister's homeless shelter provider

NY Daily News

  A Queens assemblyman is accusing Gov. Cuomo of turning a blind eye to the state’s growing homeless problem while deep-pocketed donors linked to shelters with state and city contracts fill his campaign coffers with cash.

Cuomo has raked in more than three-quarters of a million dollars in donations over the past decade from contributors with ties to the shelter system, according to Assembly Member Andrew Hevesi (D-Queens).

Board members associated with various homeless shelters have gifted the governor $322,972.50, while donors associated with Help USA, a shelter service provider founded by the governor and chaired by his sister, Maria Cuomo Cole, have ponied up $451,285 in donations.

“Andrew Cuomo is profiting from the growth in homelessness," Hevesi told the Daily News. "He has taken three-quarters of a million dollars from people who have a financial interest in having more people become homeless.”

Cuomo adviser Rich Azzopardi, pointing out that the sum is less than 1% of the $118 million raised by his boss in recent years, said Hevesi’s criticisms are nothing more than the smoldering remnants of a grudge against the governor for locking up his father, former state comptroller Alan Hevesi, over a pension fund scandal more than a decade ago.

“As the governor always says, anyone who can be influenced by a single dollar has no place in government and that is as true now as it was the day when Attorney General Cuomo busted Hevesi’s father for selling the pension fund to the highest bidder," Azzopardi said. “The assemblyman’s conspiracy theories are sad, his family vendetta is pathetic and he should be doing better by his constituents.”

Hevesi countered that his only concern is the steady increase in the number of people, especially children, struggling with homelessness under Cuomo’s watch.

Each year, about 250,000 New Yorkers find themselves faced with the prospect of spending a night in a shelter at some point. The majority, three out of five, are school-aged children, according to the Assembly Committee on Social Services, which Hevesi helms.Since 2011, the number of school-age kids experiencing homelessness in the Empire State has increased 69% to 152,839 students.

Wards Island homeless shelters run by Governor Cuomo's sister non-profit group are in slum conditions

 

THE CITY

Last fall, a Cuomo administration agency signed off on a new shelter on Wards Island to be operated by HELP Social Services, part of a nonprofit founded decades ago by the governor and chaired by his sister, Maria Cuomo Cole.

The Office of Temporary & Disability Assistance had inspected the facility several times before and after it opened on three floors in a state psychiatric hospital. On Oct. 5, the agency certified that the site on the island between Manhattan and Queens was fit to provide safe lodging for single homeless men, records show.

Then cold weather arrived.

Inspections by the Coalition for the Homeless found interior temperatures in two dozen rooms on all three floors of the new shelter hit lows in the high 50s. Men slept with their jackets on. Extra blankets and space heaters arrived, but the chill remained. At one point, some men were moved into city-run shelters.

That wasn’t the only problem for HELP on Wards Island. An investigation by THE CITY discovered that as the state has approved an expansion of HELP’s homeless shelters in the city, multiple woes have plagued the nonprofit’s four Wards Island facilities.

THE CITY’s examination, based on public records, interviews with clients and accounts of inspections of the Wards Island HELP shelters by the Coalition for the Homeless, found:

• Raw sewage flooding a basement, black mold creeping along walls and ceilings, and a summer blackout that stranded a man in an electric wheelchair for hours in the dark. On Memorial Day, inspectors found another man in a wheelchair locked in a bathroom – apparently by shelter staff.

• As of May 24, the three shelters in facilities within city Department of Buildings jurisdiction had 71 building code violations — some dating to 2017. The fourth shelter, Meyers, where the heat outage struck, is in a state building and is not inspected by the city’s Buildings Department. The city 

Department of Homeless Services says most of the violations have been addressed, though they’re still in the process of certifying that the repairs are complete and have allocated $10 million for upgrades.

• HELP currently has 33 active contracts with the city dating back as early as 2013 — 20 of which wound up costing more than their original estimated amounts by as much as 80%. While the city contracted for $371.8 million in services, HELP USA has so far been paid $419.5 million.

• Since 2008, Cuomo Cole, her shoe-designer husband, Kenneth Cole, seven other members of HELP’s board and several top employees have written dozens of checks totaling $451,285 to Andrew Cuomo’s campaigns for governor, a review of campaign finance records shows.

 Stephen Mott, a HELP spokesperson said, “We are now and have always been a non-political organization. We have never endorsed any candidates for public office, nor have we ever raised money for political purposes.”

Mott added, “HELP USA has been working with the homeless for more than 30 years. We are deeply committed to this work and proud of our record of service to the people of New York City.”

Gov. Cuomo’s office declined to comment. During an interview with Cuomo Thursday on WAMC, host Alan Chartock spoke generally about donors expecting something in return. The governor scoffed at the notion of pay-to-play.

“If anybody ever walked up to me and said, ‘I contributed to your campaign and I therefore want you to do me a favor,’ I would knock that person on their rear-end in a nice, polite, legal way,” Cuomo said. “But look, I think it’s simpler than that. If you can be bought off for a contribution — I don’t care for $10 or $5,000 or $50,000 — you are unethical or you are criminal.”

That would also make you a prostitute, Andrew. 

Which is just as unethical as nepotism motivated patronage.