Neighbors Angry After Sunset Park Hotel Becomes Homeless Center

SUNSET PARK, NY — A Fourth Avenue hotel is being used as an emergency homeless shelter by the city despite a pledge to phase out the practice. The hotel started taking in people this month and is expected to grow to house nearly 100 people, officials said.

The Department of Homeless Services (DHS) started to rent out 22 of the 99 rooms of the Brooklyn Way Hotel, at 764 Fourth Ave. near 26th Street, this week with plans to expand to use all the rooms in the beginning of next year, said agency spokeswoman Arianna Fishman.

"We are currently using rooms in this commercial hotel to shelter New Yorkers experiencing homelessness who would otherwise be turned out onto the street," Fishman said in a statement.

"Our use of this location ensures that our homeless neighbors are supported as they get back on their feet while we implement our plan to expand ongoing high-quality borough-based shelter capacity and finally end the use of ineffective stop-gap measures, like commercial hotels, that date back decades."

Despite Mayor Bill de Blasio's pledge to phase out the use of hotels as emergency shelters following the fatal stabbing of a woman and her two children in a Staten Island one, the city started to open up new hotel-based centers around the city this year with little warning to the community.

Members of Community Board 7 and elected officials said they were only given a 24-hour notice about the Sunset Park hotel and it came a week after de Blasio held a town hall meeting in the neighborhood.

"Establishing shelters in the dark of night breaks any possibility of trust between neighborhoods and an administration," said Councilman Carlos Menchaca in a statement.

"I call on Mayor de Blasio to explain to the residents of Sunset Park why DHS has failed to offer advance notice and community engagement. I further call on this administration to make good on its broken promise to control the placement of hotels as-of-right in areas like Sunset Park."

City policy requires DHS to give elected officials and the community board a minimum of 30 days notice when a new homeless shelter will open in the neighborhood, but Fishman said in emergency situations they can provide them as soon as possible. That includes if people would otherwise be on the street.

DHS said at the eight traditional shelters the city opened this year, they have given the community more than 30 days notice and an average of 65 days notice for them.

Members of the board said they felt oversaturated with the amount of hotels being used as homeless shelters in their area, with six currently in use around Sunset Park, according to DHS.

"We are not a dumping ground for the city's problems," said outgoing Community Board 7 chair Daniel Murphy at the meeting.

The latest site will have an NYPD team working with DHS to manage security at the site, officials said.

Mayor de Blasio pledged earlier this year to end the use of hotels as shelters by 2023 following the stabbing death of Rebecca Cutler, 25, and her two daughters — Ziana Cutler, 1, and 4-month-old Mayiah Sykers — inside a Staten Island Ramada Inn in 2016.

Her ex-boyfriend, Michael Sykes, 26, was convicted of murdering Rebecca Cutler by a jury last month, but it could not decide who killed her two children after he testified that Cutler herself stabbed them.

However, the city opened up hotels in Williamsburg, Sunnyside and Kew Gardens this year with little warning to residents and elected officials, according to DNAinfo. The city's also planning to fully convert one hotel in Midtown into a shelter next month.

DHS said its priority was first ending the use of "cluster housing" — apartments the city rents in private buildings — which have been expensive and full of problems before stopping the hotel program. The cluster units have primarily been in The Bronx and the city recently announced a plan to turn 800 of them into affordable housing while closing or transitioning others into certified shelters.

Aside from ending cluster sites and hotel use, de Blasio's plan to deal with the rising homeless population around the city also calls to open up around 90 new shelters around the city, expand 30 others, and house people in the communities they come from, the New York Times reported.

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