Reprieve at shelter for the disabled

Disabled residents of a Midtown homeless shelter can stay put after the city Department of Homeless Services scrapped plans to move them out to make way for single men temporarily housed at a luxury Upper West Side hotel.

Instead, residents of the Lucerne Hotel on the Upper West Side will be moved to a hotel in the Wall Street area, city officials said. City Councilwoman Helen Rosenthal (D-Manhattan) identified the hotel as the Radisson Hotel on William St., near Wall Street.

The shelter will be the first of its kind in downtown Manhattan, city officials said.

The decision means residents of the Harmonia Hotel homeless shelter on E. 31st St. can stay put. A Harmonia resident said families learned of the decision several hours after meeting with Marco A. Carrión, commissioner of the mayor’s community affairs unit, on Friday.

“We just got the decision that we’re allowed to stay. And all the tenants, they’re so happy,” said Mike Bonano, 50, who’s lived with his wife at the shelter for five months.

“Each one of us, we have a story,” Bonano said of the Harmonia residents. “I think we touched him [Carrión] enough that he got our message across to the mayor.”

The city’s decision followed weeks of backlash over Homeless Services’ plans to move disabled Harmonia residents to other shelters around the city to make way for residents temporarily housed at The Lucerne.

Harmonia residents were menaced by a game of homeless musical chairs the city started in response to a vocal and wellorganized group, Upper West Siders for Safe Streets, which complained about the homeless men at the Lucerne, who were moved there to curb the spread of Covid-19. The group has hired a lawyer and threatened legal action.

Shannon Luchs, a senior case manager at the Harmonia, said the unexpected news surprised staff and residents.

“We’ve been told that the shelter will not close. We’re staying. We’re still here for now,” Luchs said.