By Courtney Dentch
Southeast Queens has too many group homes and facilities within its boundaries, area clergy told state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer last week.
Citing examples such as the Carlton House homeless shelter that opened in a shuttered hotel near Kennedy Airport, the religious leaders, including many from southeast Queens, asked Spitzer to protect the area from the facilities.
Spitzer met with about 50 members of the clergy at York College last Thursday in his annual meeting to address community issues in Queens. Meetings in other boroughs were also scheduled for this week.
“This is our opportunity at the start of a new term to hear from you about areas of concern you’ve heard from members of your church that we may not be focusing on,” said Spitzer, who was re-elected to a second term in November.
Several religious leaders spoke of problems with group homes, including crimes, vagrancy, and a general strain on local resources. Community Board 12, which covers part of southeast Queens from downtown Jamaica to Kennedy Airport, takes in 12 homeless shelters housing more than 950 families.
“We continue to get our overshare of group homes,” said Dr. Gloria Black, a deaconess for Amity Baptist Church, and a member of CB 12. “It creates all kinds of problems. We cannot get to the right agency to get to a solution.”
A group home can cause deterioration in a community, said Roderick Ceasar, bishop of the Bethel Gospel Tabernacle Church in Jamaica.
“It destroys the values of the neighborhoods people are working to maintain,” he said.
While little can be done to remove a facility once it is in a neighborhood, Spitzer said his office would look into the city’s process of placing a home and ask it to consider the number of group residences already in place in a community.
“You’ve got to be fair,” Spitzer said. “You can’t take all these facilities and put them all in one area. There needs to be equity in terms of how can it be done.”
A similar problem arises with recycling or waste transfer plants in southeast Queens, said Pastor Delroy Murdock of St. Paul’s United Methodist Church in Jamaica. The area is home to at least nine stations, he said.
“This is smack in the middle of housing areas,” Murdock said. It’s 150 feet from a park that’s used by children.”
Calling this an environmental justice concern, Spitzer again said he would have his office investigate the city’s decisions on local zoning laws relating to the plants.
“You have less desirable neighbors concentrated in one area,” he said. “It’s not fair and it’s not right. This is a very real problem.”
Lois Menyweather, one of Spitzer’s local representatives, also said some southeast Queens politicians are planning a town hall meeting to address siting issues involving both group homes and recycling stations.
Aside from group housing and recycling facilities that seem to overrun the southeast Queens area, clergy members also raised questions about emergency room wait times, insurance company practices and predatory lending.
Spitzer closed the meeting with a promise to return to the area in about a year to see if the problems had been addressed, he said.
“I’m going to come back and you’ll be able to hold me accountable,” he said.
Reach reporter Courtney Dentch by e-mail at TimesLedger@aol.com, or by phone at 229-0300, Ext. 138.
