New Brooklyn Homeless Shelter Blocked By Judge, Derailing Mayor's Big Rollout

CROWN HEIGHTS, BROOKLYN — The mayor's ambitious plan to roll out 90 new homeless shelters within the next five years hit another snag Tuesday, when Brooklyn Supreme Court Judge Katherine Levine blocked the opening of one of the city's first proposed shelter sites: 1173 Bergen St. in Crown Heights.

Around 40 nearby residents — who together filed a lawsuit against the city earlier this month, arguing their neighborhood already hosts more than its share of homeless shelters — packed the courtroom Tuesday afternoon to watch their attorney argue with city counsel.

After more than an hour of heated back-and-forth, Levine issued a temporary injunction against the shelter.

Previously, on March 24, another Brooklyn judge issued a temporary restraining order against it. Judge Levine's new order will extend the previous one — effectively blocking the city from transferring 104 senior homeless men to Bergen Street from other shelters across the city, as planned.

The shelter won't be allowed to open until at least after the Easter holiday, once Levine has had time to review arguments from both sides, she said.

In a statement issued after the hearing ended, Department of Homeless Services spokesman Isaac McGinn said the city is considering an "immediate appeal."

“Today’s ruling keeps 104 homeless seniors from being sheltered in their home borough," McGinn said.

Despite the judge's ruling, McGinn said the department is "undeterred in our commitment to opening this site so these seniors can be sheltered closer to the community they called home."

Lawyers from CORE Services Group, the nonprofit chosen by the city to run the shelter on Bergen Street, looked visibly dejected after Judge Levine handed down her order Tuesday. When one of them tried to get a final word in, Levine snapped: "You have your own interests. My concern is for the city and for the community... not whether you get your money."

Mayor Bill de Blasio announced his plan to build 90 new shelters in late February. At the time, he said he expected some community resistance.

"We know a lot of people are going to say, 'Wait, we don’t want anything like that in our neighborhood,'" the mayor said. "Well, guess what? Everyone needs to take on their fair share."

To mitigate some of the inevitable outrage, de Blasio promised that whenever possible, homeless people would be housed in the same neighborhood where they grew up or had been living.

"We want people to be close to home," the mayor said.

Within 24 hours of the mayor's announcement, the Department of Homeless Services revealed that three of its first five shelters would be located within a 1-mile radius of each other in Brooklyn's adjacent Prospect Heights and Crown Heights neighborhoods. (And the other two in the Belmont section of the Bronx.) One of the Brooklyn shelters opened last week at 174 Prospect Place, according to the city. Another could open any day at 265 Rogers Ave.

In court this week, when Judge Levine pressed city lawyers for evidence that the 104 homeless men now slated to move to 173 Bergen St. are originally from Crown Heights, they didn't have a clear answer.

Levine said she was concerned, then, that the city may be choosing shelter sites based not on the mayor's promised "borough by borough" approach, but on cost and convenience.

"Why wouldn't the mayor... at least show good faith by putting one in Park Slope or in Carroll Gardens?" the judge asked.

"You anticipated this," she told the mayor's legal team in a scolding tone.

Jacqueline McMickens, the attorney representing Crown Heights residents, acknowledged at Tuesday's hearing that the city has an obligation to care for its record-high population of more than 60,000 homeless — and still rising.

However, McMickens said, one neighborhood can only handle so much.

"They leave the shelters during the day and come out into the community," the attorney said. "There is litter. There is garbage. There is crime."

The neighbors whose names are on the lawsuit told Patch in a packed courthouse elevator after the hearing that their next step will be to gather testimony and photo evidence demonstrating all the ways the over-saturation of homeless people in the Bergen Street/Dean Street area has affected their "quality of life."

Although the Department of Homeless Services does not release the exact locations of buildings where it puts up homeless people (for privacy and safety reasons), residents claim there are already at least six shelters, housing more than 1,000 homeless people, in the immediate vicinity of the Bergen Street site.

"De Blasio's plan is for central Brooklyn to be the official 'home of the homeless,'" said Jennifer Catto, one of four leaders of four Dean Street block associations — or "the four Deans," as they call themselves.

Catto, who has lived in Crown Heights for seven years, said she walks past 1173 Bergen with her two young kids every morning on the way to school.

"Other neighborhoods need to step up and do their fair share," she said.

Another of the "four Deans," 60-year-old Crown Heights native Kenneth Pyle, agreed. "The city thinks we won't complain, because we're 'just Crown Heights.' But here we are."

An official within the Department of Homeless Services made the case "on background" that once de Blasio's shelter rollout is complete, Community District 8 — which includes the Bergen Street and Prospect Place shelters, but not the shelter planned for Rogers Avenue — will see a net reduction of approximately 100 beds for homeless people. That's because the city has promised to cut contracts with all "cluster sites" and hotels currently taking in the city's homeless, of which there are seven in Community District 8.

It's unclear whether any of the 85 other shelters on the city's yet-to-be-revealed rollout list will be located in the Crown Heights area.

This story has been updated. Lead photo by Marc Torrence/Patch