Fight in a B’klyn neighborhood over a planned migrant shelter sparks allegations of racism
A neighborhood fight in Gowanus, Brooklyn, over a planned emergency migrant shelter is escalating — with a lawsuit filed last week and allegations that “racist” overtones are creeping into the debate.
Over the past several months, concerns about the site’s size and location — steps from the historically contaminated Gowanus Canal in a zone polluted with toxins — have cropped up.
The debate came to a head Monday, when many of those issues were overshadowed by safety concerns and fears of migrant-driven crime or drug use in the area, several people present at a town hall-style meeting told the Daily News. While the shelter sits on a lot zoned for manufacturing, it is a short distance from a more residential area featuring the area’s trademark brownstones.
Michael Racioppo, district manager of Brooklyn Community Board 6, called much of the backlash voiced “racist.”
“We understand that people can be concerned about change when it comes to neighborhoods, but rhetoric can venture into pretty racist areas and we will not support that in any way shape or form,” Racioppo said.
More than 179,000 migrants have come to New York City since spring 2022. In response to the influx, the city has opened 217 emergency shelters.
“Additional capacity is desperately needed, and we need every community to come together as we identify viable capacity across all five boroughs to meet the urgent need for shelter,” Department of Social Services spokeswoman Neha Sharma said in a statement.
The Gowanus shelter will be managed by the nonprofit BHRAGS Home Care and will house 400 single adults. Although it’s an emergency site, residents were given months of advance notice, according to Social Services. BHRAGS did not respond to a Daily News request for comment.
The city plans to open the shelter in the spring, but a date hasn’t yet been finalized.
Monday’s meeting was intended to inform and update the neighborhood of the city’s plans. The meeting was hosted at the City Life Church and Academy, with the Department of Social Services, Department of Homeless Services, BHRAGS and Councilwoman Shahana Hanif (photo).
Flyers distributed ahead of the meeting encouraged residents to discuss concerns, including the potential community impact on “youth physical and mental health safety, general community outcomes, vagrancy, detritus, crime,” as well as whether the shelter provider would meet the task of supplying necessary services for 400 residents and whether the site could be turned into a permanent homeless shelter in the future.
“The sentiment is that folks who will arrive in the neighborhood are illegals,” Hanif said of the neighborhood backlash. “... And therefore, that’s a problem, that they should not be welcomed here.”
The site must check a few more boxes before opening, Hanif said, including an environmental impact study that is underway.
“In terms of the pushback from our neighbors — ‘these folks are criminals,’ the concerns around the uptick of drug use, the default xenophobia and racism — that will not prevent me from welcoming these newcomers into our community,” Hanif told The News.
The site borders properties that have been found to have multiple toxins in their soil — an issue that has featured heavily among neighborhood concerns. They have also raised questions about the experience of the company being brought in to operate the facility.
Eric Weingartner, a resident of the area and former CEO of The Door, accused the city of “sidestepping every best practice as it relates to environmental smarts,” by placing the shelter in a potentially contaminated building.
“They are choosing to make a terrible decision to cross 400 people off their list, and that’s nuts,” Weingartner said. “It’s literally government at its worst.”
“Everybody knows that putting this type of density in one building, especially with no services that are of substance, is literally going to create chaos,” he said. “It’s super unsafe for the residents. It’s super unsafe for the community.”
The Third Street Block Association, as well as several individual members, filed a lawsuit late last week in Brooklyn Supreme Court claiming the city violated the law by moving forward with plans to convert the former brewery into a shelter when it’s not zoned for housing.
The suit alleges the city didn’t take proper steps for an environmental review or consider the highly polluted history of the Gowanus Canal.
“In sum, the decisions of HPD and DOB, together approving the conversion of the industrial building on the development site to residential rooming units, should be vacated and set aside as arbitrary and capricious and contrary to law,” the lawsuit reads.
“We’re not opposed to the shelter coming in,” said Robert Mesnard, the president of the Third Street Block Association and a named plaintiff in the lawsuit.
“We support shelters and we support the city giving support to the migrants that are coming here to get settled in New York. Our issue would be the scale of the shelter, which at over 400, is out of scale with the low-rise residential neighborhood it’s been placed in.”