Lord, help them!
Hell's kitchen church vs. bums
Sanctuary! Sanctuary! A struggling Manhattan church has been forced to block off the steps to its front door to keep homeless druggies from defiling the sacred space, The Post has learned.
Prayers alone weren’t enough to protect Trinity Presbyterian Church in Hell’s Kitchen from temporary residents of The Watson Hotel nearby, so a makeshift barricade built out of a clothes drying rack and twine now bars the entrance to the house of God.
“These people would come and crap all over the stairs!” an outraged church member said Wednesday.
“The super did that to try and stop them. He’s here trying to guard this place with his body! If he didn’t, they would break in and wreck this place!”
The super, who gave his name as George, said the front door has to remain locked even during Sunday services, forcing the faithful to sneak into the sanctuary at 422 W. 57th St. through the side.
“I don’t open it up anymore,” he said of the main entrance.
“They were throwing syringes in there, smoking pot on the steps.”
He added, “Every day I’m fighting these guys. I’ve had to put my foot in a few asses! Right now, I’m like a security guard.”
Another church member, who showed up to pray Wednesday afternoon, said the super was “being modest.”
“He stands out here 10 hours a day, sometimes more, shooing them, asking them to keep moving,” the man said.
“It’s like digging in the sand!
They were s--tting right there next to the doors. He tied up the stairs and now they go across the street. It’s terrible.”
On its Web site, Trinity Presbyterian describes itself as a “100member congregation” that’s “limited by space, membership size and funds.”
“Unprotected by bank accounts, it faces each day as a community the same realities of each of its members and their 35,000 neighbors who confront head-on the contradictory and crushing stresses of our society and often live more out of hope than by plan,” the site says.
Hell’s Kitchen resident Zack Rakitnican, 43, who works as the super at three apartment buildings on the block, described routinely having to clean up liquor and beer bottles, syringes, needles and human waste from the sidewalk.
Rakitnican said his employers had recently received more than $1,000 in fines because sanitation inspectors have been showing up at 5:30 a.m. “and we start at 8.”
“We get ticketed before we clean it up!” he said. “It was never like this here all the years I work here. Last 15 years, never this bad. It’s going down fast.”
A maintenance worker at another building said he often finds drugs and other items stashed in street planters, and he displayed a photo on his phone of what appeared to be a prison-style shank.
“I find a knife yesterday,” said the man, who gave his name as David.
At The Watson, a woman who identified herself as the manager declined to address allegations of problem-causing tenants.
“I’m not sure what you are talking about, but if you have any problems, call 311, OK?” she said.
A spokesman for the city Department of Homeless Services wouldn’t confirm whether it had placed any people at the hotel, citing state law, but said that moving 13,000 homeless people out of shelters and into hotels had “saved lives and flattened our pandemic curve.”