Advocates Protest Planned UWS Hotel Shelter Transfers

UPPER WEST SIDE, NY – A group including faith leaders, homeless New Yorkers and advocated gathered Tuesday in the Upper West Side outside the Belleclaire Hotel to protest plans to move homeless New Yorkers from hotels back into congregate shelters.

Belleclaire residents are slated to be transferred to shelters next week and advocates are calling for the immediate implementation of Intro 146, which would increase rental assistance vouchers and provide access to permanent housing.

The group is calling on Mayor Bill de Blasio to immediately halt transfers. De Blasio announced his plan to complete the move-outs by the end of July.

"When you displace me, I have to start the cycle all over again,” said Robert Holland, resident of the Belleclaire Hotel, in a prepared statement. “They’re playing politics with our livelihoods, with our families, with our emotions.”

Advocates are concerned about a low rate of COVID-19 vaccinations, as well as the highly contagious Delta variant. Currently 14 percent of shelter residents in New York City have received their vaccines.

“New York City is at a crossroad,” said Marc Greenberg, Executive Director of the Interfaith Assembly on Homelessness and Housing, in a prepared statement. “After 4 decades of seeing increasing numbers of our most vulnerable neighbors consigned to a shelter system that far too often strips them of their dignity and condemns our children to long term and sometimes permanent trauma, we are at a moment to choose another path.

Faith leaders and Belleclaire residents participated in this action as a part of July “Homeless Rights Month” in New York, an effort by homeless New Yorkers and advocacy groups to hold 30 days of action to highlight the unnecessary danger of moving people back to congregate shelters and continuing street sweeps. The coalition is demanding three things:

1. Pause the transfers until there is a real safety plan in place, there is not an ongoing COVID threat, and every possible effort has been made to get people housing
2. Immediately discontinue street sweep activity, and instead offer single hotel rooms to individuals living unsheltered
3. Implement Intro 146 on an emergency basis, before any more transfers take place, and use the increased voucher amount to get people housing

In June, the UWS Open Hearts Initiative held a protest in the neighborhood in response to Bill de Blasio's statements about pushing to move nearly 8,000 people experiencing homelessness currently staying in hotels back into permanent shelters.