STARVED FOR ATTENTION
‘Shelter’ hunger strike
Mayor de Blasio’s homeless policies are so hard to swallow for a Queens landlord that he’s gone on a hunger strike.
Saverio “Sam” Esposito, 53, said he stopped eating Aug. 6 in protest of Hizzoner’s plan to establish a homeless shelter for 113 mentally ill men in his neighborhood by winter.
“I’m going to keep this up ’til they carry me away by ambulance,” or the mayor agrees to a sitdown, the retired cop vowed.
“I love Ozone Park,” he said. “I know that once they put this [shelter] up, this whole area is going to change dramatically.”
The city is converting a shuttered Lutheran school on 101st Avenue into a shelter. It expects to find a second site to house another 150 homeless people in the district in the coming years.
Esposito is camped out in front of the construction site. On Friday he looked no worse for the wear after five days with nothing, he said, but water and coffee to sustain him.
“I took my blood pressure. It’s fine,” Esposito said, adding he’d lost 12 pounds.
He and some friends were manning a table at which they asked passersby to sign a petition against the shelter.
Not everyone agreed with the message.
“It’s kind of messed up,” Yajaira Corona, 21, said as she pushed a child in a stroller. “I don’t think that homeless people are going to bother anybody.”
Some politicians have also rallied against the shelter.
“This is an administration that does not listen. So we have a resident going on a hunger strike,” said state Sen. Joseph Addabbo. “It is absolutely unacceptable that this individual feels that’s the only way he can gain attention to this issue.”
Esposito, who has 27 tenants, said he’s not protesting to protect property values, but to ensure safety.
Both Addabbo and Esposito said they’d rather see a shelter for women with kids or veveterans. They say homelehomeless men with mental health issues could pose a safety threat in the closeknit neighborhood.
So far the city is not budging.
“We’re moving forward with opening this facility as soon as possible,” Department of Homeless Services spokeswoman Arianna Fishman said.
Esposito pleaded guilty in 2014 to a misdemeanor in connection with a massive Social Security fraud scheme in which his father, Joseph Esposito, was one of the ringleaders. Esposito, who said he has long been on bad terms with his dad, got no jail time.
Esposito, who has set up a tent where he sleeps at night and uses a rented portable toilet, said he plans to keep going until the mayor sits down with local pols or himself — and as long as his body can take it.
“I’m not sure what’s going to end up happening,” he said. “I gotta do this.”