SUITE LIFE FOR HOMELESS
The city checked more than 150 homeless men into an upscale Brooklyn hotel and apartment tower to ride out the coronavirus — potentially bringing the pandemic to the doorstep of the building’s residential units, tenants say.
“There were people lined up outside the hotel, and they weren’t wearing masks and gloves. They weren’t social distancing at all,” said one resident, describing the scene when approximately 160 homeless were dropped off at the Tillary Hotel in Downtown Brooklyn
on May 15, with no warning to tenants. “They were also chilling out in the lobby, talking, sitting beside each other on the couch,” continued the tenant, who asked not to be named. “A couple of them had masks on, but most did not.”
As part of a City Hall push to get the homeless off the street and out of cramped shelters with the bug raging, the crush of newcomers were ushered into most of the building’s 174 hotel rooms on its six lowest floors, which once hosted Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman’s wife during his federal trial.
But above the hotel sit five floors of apartments — with an average monthly rent of $3,342, according to StreetEasy.com — full of tenants who say that the move undermines their efforts to avoid the plague.
“I feel like I’ve done my part at social distancing,” said the first tenant. “But then the city moves these people in who aren’t practicing this at all.”
A second tenant in the building at Flatbush Avenue Extension and Tillary Street shared those worries.
“They’re using our same stairs, elevators, lobby without masks,” the resident, who also asked not to be identified, told The Post.
Both tenants also noted that the homeless hotel residents are free to come and go from the hours of 9 a.m. and 6 p.m., leading them to question whether it defeated the point of them being off the streets.
“The whole purpose of the city offering shelters to the homeless is so that they can quarantine,” said the second tenant.
The residents also cited security concerns, saying some of their new neighbors openly use drugs and that the city saw fit to install a metal detector in the hotel lobby.
“If the city doesn’t think these people are safe — if they’re having,
on the hotel side, a metal detector — then I have to assume the same,” said the second tenant.
Their biggest fear, however, is that the move will introduce the contagion into the building.
A spokesman for the city’s Department of Homeless Services insisted the location is not being used to house positive or symptomatic homeless.
But two men — both of whom were openly smoking pot outside the hotel and neither of whom was wearing a mask — told The Post they were never tested.
“They didn’t test us for s--t,” said one of the homeless men.
Leo Rubin, one of the building’s landlords, told The Post that he had no idea what he was signed up for when he agreed to take in homeless New Yorkers at a rate of $100 per room per day.
“I don’t have to tell you what the hotel has been going through for the past three months. So you go over it and you decide you’re closed anyway, why not take in the homeless?” said Rubin. “I thought it was maybe veterans, older, calmer people. I had no idea what I was getting myself into.”
Isaac McGinn, a DHS spokesman, said that the homeless were no more bound to abide by coronavirus precautions than the average city resident.
“Just like all other New Yorkers, our clients are free to take a walk, get fresh air or exercise. Just like all other New Yorkers, we are not monitoring with tracking devices how and where they may spend their time,” said McGinn.
“And just like all New Yorkers, we encourage our clients to stay inside as much as possible or wear a mask or face covering if you will be unable to social distance.”