de Blasio is setting up a new deal for the city to buy cluster buildings from another slumlord

 NY Daily News

Ashley Taliercio and her two children have been in their Harlem apartment for three months, but it feels like years.

Each day they’re forced to walk a gauntlet of squalor: caved-in ceilings, used condoms, cigarette butts lining the stairways and constant cold inside their claustrophobic studio.

All of it has begun to numb the 30-year-old mother.

“There’s roaches, there’s fighting. There’s people doing drugs in the hallway,” she told the Daily News, her son crying in her arms, her daughter sitting stone-faced on the bed they share. “It’s not safe. But it is what it is.”

Taliercio lives at 148 W. 124 St., one of 14 buildings in Upper Manhattan and the Bronx the city is planning to buy from Mark Irgang, a landlord who already earns money from the city by housing homeless people in emergency “cluster-site” housing.

The land deal, which the city has treated as a closely guarded secret since announcing it in November, is the second part of its plan to phase out cluster housing by buying it and converting it into permanent affordable apartments.

The practice of housing people in cluster, or scatter-site, apartments has come under fire because the units cost the city a fortune to rent, and are often in a terrible state of disrepair.

Buying the Irgang’s 14 apartment buildings outright will also cost the city, however. Property records show the buildings are worth at least $41 million.

And it won’t just cost in terms of taxpayer money. Buying property from shady landlords does not happen without at least some political fallout. The purchase price in phase one of Mayor de Blasio’s cluster site conversion plan was a major headache for him both before and after the deal’s completion.

He came under fire earlier this year when The News revealed the city would be buying 17 buildings from notorious landlords, Jay and Stuart Podolsky. That was phase one of the plan. The brothers ultimately ended up making $173 million on the deal — despite one city appraisal that valued the properties at just $49 million. The city comptroller launched a probe into the appraisal process, which is ongoing.

Further complicating matters in phase two is that the controversial Acacia Network manages some of the Irgang properties.

Acacia Network's poverty profiteering off the city's homeless population

Sludge


Annie was already retired when she lost her apartment. With no source of income save for her Social Security work benefits, it wasn’t long before she ended up in the New York City shelter system. That’s where she would learn the name Acacia Network. 

Acacia is the largest provider of homeless housing in New York’s metropolitan area, but it is not just a shelter operator. Over the decades, Acacia has built a small empire with connections running up the ladder of city government. It has amassed a web of interconnected nonprofits and for-profits that offer shelter, affordable housing, addiction and medical services, and security. According to the city’s Department of Homeless Services website, Acacia manages “750 individual family units and four buildings for approximately 550 homeless adults.”

Annie, whose name has been changed for this article, has been living in one of these for the last several years. But right away, she knew things were askew—and it wasn’t just that another resident had threatened to murder her. She would soon come to realize that the problem was multi-tiered: a pattern of mismanagement that left the shelter understaffed, undersupplied, and dangerous for its residents. 

“No nurse practitioner is ever there to give out the medication. The staff has to give out the medication,” Annie tells Sludge, noting that this leaves residents frequently out of sync with their individual treatment regimens with some dire consequences. Every other day, she sighs, “the ambulance seems to be there for one reason or another.” 

Compounding the issue, she says, is a lack of adequate security—something online reviews of the establishment have touched on. One reviewer says they never “felt safe” while living there.

“They’re supposed to have a guard on every floor,” Annie explains. “That rarely happens because people are always calling out. So one guard usually has to do two floors or sometimes three.”

On one occasion, Annie tells us someone at the shelter was hit over the head with a lead pipe smuggled in from a nearby construction site. Another time, she says, someone got hot water thrown on them in the dining room. 

There are other issues caused by Acacia not sufficiently treating residents, Annie says. This past summer, she explains, there was a string of toilet backups due to people flushing entire rolls and other objects.

Frustrated, Annie notes that the shelter tends to respond to these incidents in ways that hurt residents. After the hot water attack, for example, management removed hot water for tea and coffee from the dining room altogether. To address the toilet problems, the shelter’s cleaning staff stopped stocking rooms with toilet paper as soon as the facility’s annual “Callahan” inspection—named for the 1981 court case that established the “right to shelter” in New York City—had completed. 

“When you need toilet paper you have to go down to the front desk and they give you a wad…and you have to ration,” she laments.

What Annie describes is a complete culture of neglect, which doesn’t square with the large amount of money Acacia rakes in from the city. In the 2019 fiscal year alone (July 2018 through June 2019), it received $259 million in contracts from the Department of Homeless Services (DHS), which accounted for 18.5% of the department’s contracts that year. Acacia gets additional funding from the Department of Social Services and the Department of Housing Preservation and Development. Since the 2011 fiscal year, it has received over $1.1 billion worth of city contracts. 

 Acacia has seen its funding increase since Mayor Bill de Blasio took office. As luxury condominium developments rose and more of the city’s available housing stock was left empty, de Blasio found himself facing a simultaneous rise in homelessness. In response, he set out to increase the number of homeless shelters in the city. In 2017, he announced a plan, called “Turning the Tide on 
Homelessness in New York City,” to close unsafe and expensive cluster-site and hotel shelters and build 90 new shelters over five years.

Acacia and its multiple linked entities have been the biggest beneficiaries. In total, 10 Acacia entities have received roughly $1.17 billion in city funding since 2010.

Bronx landlord menaced and is now evicting tenant for trying to report uninhabitable conditions at her apartment

NY Daily News

Keep your mouth shut, and you can stay put.

That’s the loud-and-clear message a social services provider sent to a Bronx mother of three when it made her promise to stop calling the city’s 311 help line with gripes about her heat-less, rodent-filled subsidized apartment.

Iesha Poindexter told the Daily News that since she moved into her 4453 White Plains Rd. unit in 2013, it’s been one nightmare after another, with spotty heat and hot water and a near-constant sprinkling of rodent droppings on her family’s clothing.

When management failed to remedy the issues, she complained to 311 — which irked staffers so much, they told her to stop calling, or go.

In August, Poindexter was presented with a form that stipulated she must stop contacting the city helpline with complaints, or she’d get the boot. The form said she must “refrain from calling 311 in regard to any complaints or repair work that needs to be completed in your apartment or on any of Five Stars Management property.”

Poindexter, afraid she’d find herself on the street with her three sons — and the two kittens she adopted as a form of rodent control — reluctantly signed.

But now, she told The News, management is going to kick her out anyway when her lease expires in March.

“They just gave me a lease ... but said there’s no way they’re renewing it,” she said. “They evil.”

The building she lives in, Poindexter said, houses tenants who receive a mix of rent subsidies, including supportive housing and welfare money, which she receives, as well as other sources of funding like Section 8 vouchers and veterans assistance.

She pays rent out of her own pocket through supportive housing subsidies from the Acacia Network — the entity that provides social services in the building and whose letterhead appears on the form she signed — and with welfare money she gets through the city Department of Homeless Services, she said. All of it goes to the building’s property manager, Five Stars Management.

Ah, that scalliwag Acacia Network, which all you long-time Crapper readers should be familiar with.

Your tax dollars at work, DHS edition

Dumped Manhattan homeless shelter contractor is just fine for Queens

From the NY Post:

The city has ousted the contractor providing social services to homeless families housed at more than a dozen Manhattan hotels.

Children’s Community Services was quietly replaced in July with Acacia Network Housing.

The city pays hotels directly for rooms to house the homeless while it contracts with nonprofits to hire case managers who are supposed to help clients find permanent housing, apply for benefits and offer referrals for child care and other services.

A spokesman for the Department of Homeless Services would not explain why the group had been booted.

From DNA Info:

The Best Western location is being run by Childrens Community Services, a social-services provider that's offering things like job placement and financial planning to those staying at the hotel. The site has 24-hour security and a 9 p.m. curfew, a representative for the group told CB2.

Here you can watch Amanda Nasner, DHS representative and representatives from Children's Community Services at a recent CB2 meeting. Good for the community for asking tough questions.



Meanwhile, in other LIC housing news, Jimmy Van Bramer told NYCHA residents that he is actually willing to listen to them on rezonings. Astounding!

Mayor's office can't keep its lies straight

.@rosannascotto Not exactly accurate, city never backed down. Provider pulled out of proposal. https://t.co/YoiWc7IVzz

— (((Aja))) (@AjaWorthyDavis) October 13, 2016

Now the provider pulled out of the proposal? And here we thought it was Harshad Patel, the hotel owner, who did. At least that's what Steven Banks said to the press a day after his spokesperson said the city backed out after local opposition.

Lies, lies
I can't believe a word you say
Lies, lies, are gonna make you sad someday

Banks stands by bait & switch and shitty service provider

From PIX11:

Less than 24 hours after Maspeth residents watched Department of Homeless Services officials covertly move homeless males into the Holiday Inn Express in Maspeth, Queens, the commissioner for the agency decided to hold a news conference.

"There are 6,000 New Yorkers currently in commercial hotel rooms that I have been rented on an individualized basis," said Steven Banks at City Hall.

Approximately 30 of those New Yorkers, all working males, are now being housed at the property with Banks admitting his agency did not notify the community until after the men were checked into the hotel --- besides regular paying guests, "We did provide notice yesterday as soon as we went into those rooms."

State senator Tony Avella, the chair of a task force in Albany that focuses on the homeless says Commissioner Banks is manipulating the system calling the move a "bait and switch" in an interview with PIX11 News.

When PIX11 asked Commissioner Banks on Tuesday if he had any concerns about the city doing business with Patel considering his past? Banks offered the following, "We work with Acacia which is a reputable non-for-profit. They identified this site as a site in which services could be provided."

When pushed about DHS providing the contract with Acasia? Banks said, "We are going to keep doing business with Acacia which is a very reputable non-for-profit."

City data we examined on the Mayor's Office of Operations site, showed that in the August shelter scorecard, Acacia had more than 3,700 open violations.

Dutch Kills shelter responsible for hundreds of 911 calls

From Queens Gazette:

Civic and local leaders are trying to figure out how the city chooses clients for its homeless shelters, and why so many people with a history of mental or psychiatric conditions are dumped in the shelter system, rather than being placed in facilities where they can obtain proper care and supervision.

Case in point: a homeless shelter for 200 women located at the former Verve Hotel at 40-03 29th St. in the Dutch Kills section of Long Island City.

Just released statistics show that there are currently 180 women living in the shelter. Fifty of those women are employed and close to living on their own, while 110 to 120 women have a history of psychiatric problems.

At a meeting last week attended by representatives of shelter operator Acacia Network and community leaders, police officials reported that officers at the 114th Precinct had responded to another 291 emergency (911) calls between June 1 and September 18, each involving shelter clients. The calls ranged from felony counts and drug possession to lesser counts of harassment and resisting arrest.

“Do the math,” Dutch Kills Civic Association President George Stamatiades said. “Officers at the 114th Precinct have responded to the shelter 641 times since it opened in October 2015. Throw that number at people who complain that police response is slow.”

The fact that cops were called to the shelter 291 times in just over three months, is in itself, startling.

“But when you add to that the fact that the same officers responded to 350 similar 911 calls involving shelter residents between November 2015 and February 2016, you have to question what’s going on there,” Stamatiades said.

“Many of the calls were placed by people inside the shelter – counselors and security guards who had problems with women who became combative,” a law enforcement source said. “They called 911 when situations got out of control, or when they posed some kind of imminent danger to others.”

“A number of the calls from the shelter were ‘aided’ requests for an ambulance or medical assistance for residents,” the source said. “There were a number of calls involving disputes and other conditions that required police intervention.”

People living near the shelter made 911 calls when they spotted shelter clients exposing themselves for cash to motorists, and to remove clients who were using basement laundry rooms to have sex with “customers.”

The Patel family owns this hotel and Acacia Network runs the homeless program. Now I believe it is clear why Maspeth is fighting a shelter in their neighborhood so vehemently.

DeBlasio's Evil Empire has its sights on Maspeth

From DHS (Current Requests for Proposals):

In order to meet its legal obligations DHS maintains an open-ended Request for Proposal process through which non-profit social service providers submit proposals to augment capacity. Although DHS does not target specific areas to open shelters, the agency strives to keep families near their communities as much as possible. This is an open-ended request for proposals, therefore, there is no prescribed due date for submissions. All suitable proposals will be reviewed by the agency on an ongoing basis as received. Non-profit social service providers may submit a proposal to develop and operate the following:

Stand-Alone Transitional Residences for Homeless Single Adults
Stand-Alone Transitional Residences for Homeless Families
Stand-Alone Drop-In Centers for Homeless Adults

Ok, so the social services provider makes a deal with a building owner and then applies to the DHS for a contract.

When the city was asked how it can go into business with Harshad S. Patel, who had bragged about bribing a state senator in the past, they told the following to channel 11:

This jibes with what it says on their website.

So then how can this be?

From NY1:

The Department of Homeless Services says negotiations to convert a Queens hotel into a homeless shelter are ongoing. This comes after the Holiday Inn Express in Maspeth tweeted last night saying it’s confirming “the hotel will not be converting to a shelter as suggested.”

From the Queens Chronicle:

A Department of Homeless Services spokesperson told the Chronicle in a brief phone call on Friday that "negotiations are ongoing" between the city, hotel owner Harshad Patel and service provider Acacia Network. Just one day earlier, Patel told the Chronicle in an interview that the proposal is 100 percent dead.

Why is the city pressuring the hotel owner into a contract with Acacia Network, when that's not how the process is supposed to work?

Bill de Blasio desperately wants a shelter in Maspeth and his Evil Empire will do whatever it takes to make sure that happens, even if it means breaking the rules and making sure the city contracts with a crook. The question is, which stable, working class neighborhood will be next? (Looks like it may be Corona.)

As constituents protest, electeds hold secret meeting with Maspeth shelter operator

This gets more and more interesting. Apparently as protesters continued their nightly vigil outside the hotel, one night before the public meeting about the shelter, Maspeth's electeds and members of CB5 decided to hold a secret meeting at O'Neill's Restaurant (no one would ever see them there) with Acacia Network in order to discuss the security plan for the shelter they are supposedly fighting. We're still 30 days away from the opening of the shelter and these people have already thrown in the towel by meeting to discuss the security plan.

The only problem is that when you have a secret meeting in a place half the town visits regularly, you are bound to get caught. That's exactly what happened. The police notified the electeds that the protesters were storming up to the restaurant and they ran away just before they got up there.

Stupid is as stupid does.

Why Queens is being inundated with shelters

Hey all, this info came to me late last night. As you can see from the City's own chart above, Acacia Network, the "social service" organization that is responsible for the poorly run Verve Hotel in LIC and which is planning to open a shelter at the Holiday Inn Express in Maspeth, has so many problems and violations at its other shelters that the city is closing them down. "C" means closed and "P" means pending closure. So where to put all the homeless that Manhattan, Staten Island, Brooklyn and the Bronx are responsible for? Why QUEENS, of course! That's the fair thing to do after all. Burden overtaxed working and middle class homeowners so that a charity with a long history of coming up short for both the city and its clients can continue to enrich themselves.

There is no huge increase in numbers of homeless, just fewer sites to place them. You'll notice the line highlighted in green is about an adult couples shelter that has 39 rooms. The city is claiming that if the Maspeth community can come up with an alternate site containing 35 rooms, then the Holiday Inn site will be tabled. Is this why? They need to replace a closed Manhattan shelter for adult couples?

An industrious fellow on the Maspeth 11378 Facebook page also did some digging and came up with a lot of information about this so called "charity" known as Acacia Network.

I suppose the Queens papers could have uncovered this, if they weren't so busy defending Liz Crowley and Marge Markey.

And the response from City Hall?

Maspeth homeless shelter meeting was quite a spectacle

I will try to summarize the most relevant points about the Maspeth homeless shelter meeting below.


This video shows the first 30 minutes or so of the meeting, featuring a screeching Liz Crowley and Yabba Dabba Joe Addabbo. Some of the first public speakers are also included.

(Incidentally, I believe this is the video that Gothamist reporter Emma Whitford used to write her false headline which Brooklyn BP Eric Adams then got his knickers in a twist over. Why actually attend a meeting and gather your own facts when you can just crib off someone else's work and call yourself a reporter on your résumé?)


I don't know if anyone has an estimate of how many people showed up Thursday, but suffice it to say that hundreds were inside the auditorium and hundreds more were turned away.


Perhaps the best comment of the night came from Maspeth activist and Republican Assembly candidate Tony Nunziato, who pointed out that people are upset because the city wants to dump something in Maspeth that will require security and additional police manpower in order to protect the community from it. (Incumbent State Assemblywoman Marge Markey did not attend the meeting.)

Those who couldn't get in marched down to the hotel to protest. When the meeting concluded, many others joined them. One person received a summons for disorderly conduct.

Lincoln Restler attended but did not speak. He spent the whole night with his nose in his cell phone. Acacia Network did not send a representative to answer questions for some reason.

There was no mention of the "alternate" plan proposed earlier.

Today it was revealed that the Acacia Network has been looking to hire social workers for the Holiday Inn shelter since July, well before the secret meeting at the Maspeth Library.

Why Maspeth is getting a shelter, part 2

The leadership of Acacia Network have contributed to both Scott Stringer and Bill deBlasio.

The chairwoman also donated.

Now this may seem like not too much money, but these folks do business with the city and can't contribute as much as the average person.

But who knows how many friends and family members also contributed?

Money talks.

Maspeth shelter provider's history of protecting the homeless and communities is abysmal

The shelter "service provider" for the Maspeth Holiday Inn is Acacia Network.

If you're opposed to the shelter in Maspeth then you need to read the following very carefully, because Mayor de Blasio will be sending this your way in less than 60 days.

From State Senator Ruben Diaz:

You should know that this past Friday, November 13, 2015, a woman who resides at the homeless shelter located at 941 Intervale Avenue, Bronx, New York, was reportedly stabbed by a resident of the same shelter. The shelter, which is run by Acacia Network is across the street, right in front of my District Office.

According to reports and statements people have given me, the perpetrator was caught on tape breaking the security cameras in the homeless shelter during the weekend (November 7 - 8) before Friday’s stabbing.

The assailant’s vandalism did not come to Acacia’s attention until Monday, November 9, because no one on Acacia’s staff took a look at the cameras over the weekend. On Tuesday, November 10th, Acacia’s staff reported the destroyed cameras to the police, providing copies of the video tapes to the 41st Precinct, with footage of the suspect smashing the security cameras.

Even though Acacia gave this information to the police, the perpetrator was not questioned or arrested until after Friday’s stabbing took place.

The family shelter residents at 941 Intervale Avenue went unprotected for a whole week without their building’s security cameras working, and with no one to check for their safety.
__________________________________________________________________________

From Crains:

In March, the Department of Investigation issued a blistering report about odious conditions at cluster sites citywide, including at facilities run by two of the organizations soon to win new contracts, Acacia Network and Bushwick Economic Development Corp., known as BEDCO.

“At the time of the inspection, one elevator was broken and stuck on the sixth floor,” the report said of an Acacia site. “The other had a large puddle of urine on the floor.” It noted a broken window with glass strewn across the hallway of the facility for homeless families.

The poor conditions have been corrected, Acacia said in a statement.

The city paid $95 a night, on average, for the Acacia apartments — two to three times what market-rate tenants pay in those neighborhoods, according to the report from Department of Investigations Commissioner Mark Peters.
__________________________________________________________________________

From QNS:

On Feb. 11, police responded to a call of a dispute among shelter roommates. A woman struck her roommate with a metal object and was placed under arrest, Fortune said.

Officers brought her to Weill Cornell Medical Center, the medical school at Cornell University, to be treated. While police were escorting the woman out of the ambulance, Fortune said, she became “very aggressive” and headbutted an officer, who sustained minor injuries.

Because the woman was arrested, police were responsible for watching her until she was released, he said. The next day, the patient became aggressive again and hit an officer with a metal IV pole and kicked him several times.

Police were called to the shelter again on Feb. 12 when a resident who refused to go through the metal detector broke the device. She then proceeded to throw chairs and soda bottles in the lobby. The woman was arrested and transported to Weill Cornell Medicine for a psychiatric evaluation.

Fortune also added that police have had to respond to calls of residents trying to hurt themselves and a chronic 911 call from someone who has repeatedly reported that a woman was stabbed inside the shelter. The precinct has also received complaints of women harassing store owners in the area.

District Manager Florence Koulouris, who attends monthly community advisory meetings with staff at the shelter, said there have also been issues with “aggressive panhandling.” Some women at the shelter frequently steal from a local pharmacy and businesses in the area, she said. Acacia Network, the service providers for the shelter, said its security staff would do roving car patrols to monitor the women when they are out of the shelter but have not been doing an adequate job, according to Koulouris.

“The problem is we’ve been getting a lot of excuses [from Acacia Network] because [they always say] there are problems with the vehicle, the vehicle is in the shop,” Koulouris said. “Supposedly they’re using private unmarked cars for this which is completely unacceptable because the patients of The Verve … they don’t see the cars. Their awareness is down and they tend to act inappropriate.”

Fortune said he has been in contact with Acacia Network to discuss the two recent violent incidents, which they were unaware of.

“They should know what’s going on over there,” Fortune said. “When I told them some of these incidents, they had no idea that this was even happening. In fact, they asked me for names of who was involved.”
_________________________________________________________________________

From the Queens Chronicle

“The reports from the 114th Precinct are disconcerting,” City Council Majority Leader Jimmy Van Bramer (D-Sunnyside) said in a statement. “I have voiced my concerns about the shelter to the Department of Homeless Services and the Administration.”

Van Bramer added he was particularly troubled by reports that the provider of services at the shelter, Acacia Network, had not been doing adequate neighborhood patrols.

“The Administration has confirmed to my office that they will be adding additional security officers at the Verve shelter,” he said.

Not long after the shelter opened, officials acknowledged some concerns had been raised about overcrowding and residents loitering outside the building. But local business owners have also complained that residents have been harassing them and causing disturbances.

Jeff Franco, who works at the nearby LIC Deli & Grocery, said there have been instances of the women fighting, panhandling and stealing from the store. Those sorts of things can make others in the neighborhood, including tourists staying in hotels, hesitant to shop there, he said.

“Your business goes down because people don’t feel like coming here,” he said.

Ali, who works at the Saz Deli & Grocery on 31st Street but declined to give his last name, said he had called police on more than one occasion after incidents involving women from the shelter.

“They give me too much of a hard time,” he said.

According to Koulouris, Acacia is supposed to conduct neighborhood patrols in a marked car. But the service provider has said recently the car was out of service and it was instead doing patrols in private, unmarked vehicles.

Koulouris called that “unacceptable” and said there should be a visible security presence in the community. On a recent Saturday, a white SUV marked Sera Security could be seen outside the shelter.

Nevertheless, Koulouris said, Acacia made a promise to take care of its clients and be a good neighbor in the community.

“Right now, Acacia is not being a good neighbor,” she said.

__________________________________________________________________________

From the Bronx Chronicle:

Community members are outraged after a former Bronx motel turned homeless shelter has two registered sex offenders living in the facility.

The former hot-sheets motel, Capri-Whitestone, known for it’s blood stained mattresses and bed bugs closed last year with the hope from community members that it would be developed into something that would accompany Donald Trump’s new golf course. Instead, the motel was turned over to Acacia Network, a non-profit organization that opened the building as a homeless shelter for families.

However, there are currently two registered sex offenders, Curtis Bolden and James Bryant who are listed as living at the shelter.

According to the NY State Division of Criminal Justice website (a publicly accessible website), Curtis Bolden was convicted in 1980 for raping two women. James Bryant was convicted in 2004 for aggressive sexual assault of a 7 year old child. Bolden is listed a level 3 offender while Bryant is a level 2 offender.

A level 3 offender is considered at high risk of repeat offenses and a threat to public safety, as stated by the NY State Division of Criminal Justice website.
_________________________________________________________________________

Why does the de Blasio administration insist on entering into contracts with a provider that has a documented terrible history? Who else out there can totally fail at their work and get rewarded with more work?

Maspeth hotel owner has really bad history as shelter landlord

Ángel Franco/The New York Times

So we did some research over the weekend. The owner of the Holiday Inn Express site on paper is "New Ram Realty, LLC". A name attached to that corporation is Harshad S. Patel. Patel is president of Gujarati Samaj. But his claim to fame is hotel-to-homeless shelter developer.

Patel is owner of the former Quality Inn in Jamaica, which closed last year and became Retreat Inn. This hotel was noted for having been turned into a shelter without warning.

Patel was also behind the hotel controversy at the former Frozen Cup in Bellerose. Here's a gem: "On Dec. 15, one of the hotel developers, Mitesh Patel, told several dozen residents at a community board meeting at the Bellerose Assembly of God Church that he and his partners aimed to create a reputable hotel, not a “hot sheets” establishment." Perhaps not, but the Patels would be perfectly willing to turn it into a homeless shelter.

Just like they did with the Verve Hotel, which has had a litany of documented problems - so many, in fact, that the local police captain publicly complained about them.

And the Verve Hotel is run by Acacia Network, just as the one at Maspeth will be.

So there is an existing relationship between this owner, the service provider and the City. What happened at Verve should be reason enough to not enter into another contract with those two.

Interestingly, the above news report stated that last year, there were close to 59,000 people in shelters, and the most recent census on DHS' website says 58,665, so if the numbers are stable then why the city needs to open more shelters anywhere is a good question.

This is simply the old game of real estate owners pocketing government cash and corrupt pols helping them do it. The electeds who foist these disgusting situations upon decent working class neighborhoods should be ashamed. But they never are because they never get sent packing on Election Day.

Isn't it great that the City has a bailout system in place for millionaire hotel developers paid for with our tax dollars? This is classic neoliberalism.

I wrote, "just because it's as-of-right don't make it right" on Curbed way back in 2007 when this shit was being built because we all kind of knew what was coming down the pike.