By Bill Parry
More than 60 East Elmhurst homeowners, elected officials, clergy and community leaders gathered last Thursday at St. Mark’s AME Church to discuss The Landing, the new emergency shelter for homeless families at the former Clarion Hotel.
The city Department of Homeless Services began moving families into the 169-unit facility, located at 94-00 Ditmars Blvd., Aug. 27 a week after notifying local leaders.
“Let me be crystal clear so there is no misunderstanding or misinterpretation of my words,” state Sen. Jose Peralta (D-East Elmhurst) said. “I am not against the homeless or the homeless shelter, but I am very much against the current process in which DHS comes into our community and converts former hotels into emergency shelters with little or no communication.”
Peralta co-sponsored legislation that would require the city to involve communities, listening to their comments and input, not just informing them. Elmhurst United members, who led protests against the shelter at the Pan Am, and homeowners who live near the Westway Motel on Astoria Bouelevard attended.
“As we mentioned at the meeting, the conversions of the former Westway and Pan Am hotels into emergency shelters resulted in issues that included health and safety violations,” Peralta said. “Because of these and other violations, the city comptroller rejected the contracts proposed by DHS to transform the emergency shelters into permanent ones.”
The community plans to organize a town hall meeting to further discuss The Landing. Peralta vowed to keep an eye on the shelter while applying pressure to the city.
“We will hold the administration’s feet to the fire when it comes to DHS’s promises of bringing more resources into the community,” he said. “If we are going to accept another homeless shelter ,let’s get the resources that are needed.”
DHS had no comment.
Meanwhile, Mayor Bill de Blasio blasted Rudy Giuliani a day after the former mayor questioned his handling of the city’s current homeless crisis in a New York Post op-ed. Giuliani blamed the current mayor’s “so-called ‘progressive’ view” for allowing the homeless population to soar to nearly 60,000 people earlier this year, while touting his own “humane and effective” solutions during his two terms.
“I think he’s delusional,” de Blasio said. “If you think what Rudy Giuliani did as mayor, homelessness went up about 40 percent on his watch. He clearly doesn’t remember the fact that he chased—as he said, he chased and chased people, but he also deprived families of benefits they needed and help they needed.”
De Blasio noted a recent “change in tone” after Cardinal Dolan urged New Yorkers not to “reduce these troubled people to objects, to animals, to ‘a problem to get rid of’” in an op-ed of his own.
“At that point, you noticed that Giuliani changed his rhetoric, and again, in a delusional manner, presented some wonderland over which he governed in which he provided all sorts of wonderful, nurturing services for people,” de Blasio said. “It didn’t happen that way. So this is a tale of two Rudy’s—one who says he’d like to chase people away and another who suddenly thinks he was nurturing them.”
Reach reporter Bill Parry by e-mail at bparr
