Friday, September 30, 2016

Future hotel-shelters worry Jamaica residents


From the Queens Chronicle:

When you live near one of the busiest airports in the world and a train ride from downtown Manhattan, you are going to live near hotels.

But residents of Southeast Queens are becoming increasingly worried that the proliferation of smaller hotels either opened up or under construction dovetails all too well with the city’s recent penchant for locating homeless shelters and other supportive housing within Community Board 12.

Glenn Greenridge, the Land Use Committee chairman at CB 12, went down a partial list last week:
• one in the early stages of construction at the corner of 115th Avenue and Guy R. Brewer Boulevard;
• a 56-room facility beginning construction at 97-01 Waltham Street;
• another two blocks away with a proposed 42 rooms near the intersection of Waltham and 97th Avenue;
• an 85-room site under construction next to the Howard Johnson Hotel on Archer Avenue; and
• excavation underway for a hotel at 140-35 Queens Blvd., less than a block away from a building at 140-17 that looks close to completion.

“When the folks made their presentation to put a hotel in the old TWA building at Kennedy Airport, they said they’re spending $62 million of their own money. They said their research showed hotels in Queens were at capacity,” Greenridge told the Chronicle in an interview last week.

“But what happens in two or three years if the economy changes and the demand doesn’t keep up with the supply?” he asked. “We have over 10 proposed hotels in CB 12 alone. A property owner [of a smaller hotel] might decide $80 to $100 per night per room from the city sounds pretty good.”

Greenridge’s comments came two days after a meeting of CB 12 where many expressed their belief that the exploding number of hotel applications in the district coming at a time when the city is experiencing a homeless crisis is not a coincidence.

Greenridge said residents’ fears are not groundless, with the city having converted at least one hotel into a shelter in his memory, and that they have every right to be concerned.

Residents in the district already have little if any trust in Mayor de Blasio or the Department of Homeless Services when it comes to shelters.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

South Jamaica is a shit hole anyway.
They won't really be bothered by another shitload being dumped there.

Anonymous said...

Community leaders need to ban together and sue the Mayor and DHS. Queens has become a dumping ground and other states are shipping their problems here. The Right to Shelter law in NY needs to end. By the time residents figure this out it will be too late. We need to start organizing.

Anonymous said...

One has to think when going to these hotels!
You think you are staying at a hotel but it looks like all hotels in the outer boroughs will be homeless shelters.
They could kick out the homeless people Fri-Mon and have them return Monday night.
I wonder how these hotels like their name to be linked to a homeless shelter.

Anonymous said...

Hey, did everyone hear about the 50 story hotel a Japanese guy wants to build a few blocks from Court Sq Civic on Jackson Ave. Maybe Mamma Gianna and the Library can jointly hold a town hall meeting about it.

Of course, after everyone meets with Jimmy first to get their script.

Anonymous said...

Yes other states send their homeless people to the right to shelter state...New York State!
We can not even take care of our own people because we are taking care of other states homeless.
This must be in every state! The right to shelter their own people. Why should New York State fund this when the middle class is slowly leaving?
Can it be true? NY will be for the very rich and very poor?
Was Bloomberg and Giuliani wrong for giving these people bus fare to head back home? deBlasio said it was heartless but where is the money coming from? Already over taxed people? Some even living paycheck to paycheck and see EVERYTHING going up but their paychecks!
I think every able body person who can work should work for their benefits! Support those who are elderly and with disabilities. Those with mental health issues have more help for these individuals.
But what is the goal here is to get the other states on board with this right to shelter.

Anonymous said...

>Was Bloomberg and Giuliani wrong for giving these people bus fare to head back home? deBlasio said it was heartless

Wait,DeBlasio ended that program? Why? It was completely voluntary, and a bus ticket is a hell of a lot cheaper than housing someone for life.

M. How said...

Our Democratic Club is thinking ahead. We will eventually have to accept 100,000 Middle Eastern people, i.e., potentially Democratic voters. At that time Queens "hotels" become what they were originally constructed for -- shelters. The citizens here will have no no excuse for not accepting thousands of refugees. That's where the graft will continue.

Anonymous said...

Jamaica will never thrive if more shelters are built. The area will worsen as a dumping ground for the homeless.

Joe Moretti said...

NO FUCKING SHIT. It is just taking NOW for these ghetto hicks to figure this out. For years and decades, crooked and do nothing elected officials (Spigner, Cook, Comrie, Meeks, Scarborough, Smith, Flake, etc) and shady church leaders (I mean there are only about a thousand of them) stood by and did nothing while one disastrous piece of shit (like Royal Waste) after another was dumped into this community, while the whole time the uneducated, stupid, gullible and "could care less" ghetto sheeple went along with it.

So now Jamaica is putting millions and millions of dollars into Jamaica so that it can become "Homeless Village".

Each time I think this community cannot get anymore ghetto dumber, it just keeps going lower and lower the ghetto measuring stick.

This is what happens when elected officials do nothing, community boards just go along and very few stand up for what is right.

You get what you deserve.

Queens and NYC is so over, while many other major cities keep getting better. Idiot Trump says we get the worse from other countries, no we keep producing our own worse, out own homegrown USA idiot sheeple.