FEARING FOR THE KIDS
Shelter by school enrages parents
The city unveiled a plan last week to house 108 vagrants — without background checks — in a new homeless shelter across from a school on the Upper West Side.
The move has outraged parents who had no clue about the looming arrivals.
Nonprofit Breaking Ground’s “safe haven” transitional shelter is set to open next month at 106108 West 83rd St. off Columbus Avenue, directly across the street from the PS 9 schoolyard.
Residents will not undergo criminal-background checks and can stay as long as they want, the group and city officials said at a Zoom meeting this week.
“I foresee fighting, I foresee public drinking and drunkenness. I foresee a lot of bad stuff, and that’s not just me holding my pearls — that’s just the reality,” said Kenna Kolaitos, 45, mother of a 6-year-old daughter in kindergarten at PS 9 and a 10-yearold daughter in fifth grade at MS 243 Center School, housed in the same building.
“We don’t know what type of unhoused individuals [are moving in]. Are they pedophiles? Are they murderers? Do they have any criminal background? Or are they just unlucky and don’t have a place to stay?” she said.
‘Find another place’
Tae Lee, whose daughter is a third-grader at PS 9, had no clue a shelter was on the way. “I have concerns, of course, because my kid goes to school here . . . It doesn’t make sense.”
Maria Gonzalez, who does pickup and dropoff with her eighth-grade grandniece and fourth-grade grandnephew at the school, railed, “Let them find another place. Why don’t they go to Fifth Avenue or Park Avenue with these shelters? Why do they have [possible] sex offenders living across the street [from a school]?”
The troubling details emerged Tuesday during a two-hour Zoom meeting with the provider and city reps from the Department of Social Services and Department of Homeless Services hosted by Community Board 7’s Health & Human Services Committee. The meeting was criticized as a “sham” by angry residents who couldn’t voice their disapproval.
“They ramrodded it, railroaded us,” said Maria Danzilo, a community activist and lawyer who was on the Zoom call. “They did everything possible to hide the fact that this shelter was coming to the neighborhood, across the street from a school playground,” said the former state Senate candidate.
“There is no vetting whatsoever, and it’s three doors away from where Maria Hernandez was murdered,” Danzilo said, referring to the 74-year-old found bound and gagged in her apartment in January.
Equally galling was how CB7 committee chair Shelly Fine allegedly “selectively filtered questions and comments” during the Zoom meeting, and made it into a webinar so it would appear that everyone supported the plan, some attendees charged.
“The public was invited to speak, which didn’t happen . . . . Comments critical of this project were skipped over. They tried to sneak it in. There must have been hundreds of people who wanted to talk,” said Wendy Blank, 77.
Quick reversal
City Councilwoman Gale Brewer cheered the shelter at the meeting, called its residents “pretty low-key” and claimed she had spoken with neighboring schools and businesses about it.
But Friday — as outrage snowballed — she told The Post: “Breaking Ground could have done more to involve the community and officials earlier in the process. I didn’t hear about it until just before the community-board meeting.”
The facility is being funded as part of a larger, $171 million program Mayor Adams announced in April.
It will serve residents directly referred by “outreach teams who have been building rapport” with the vagrants, the officials said.
The plan is to fill 80 beds over the first few months and the remaining 28 beds this summer.
Unlike most shelters in the city, this one is considered a “safe haven,” which is less restrictive than traditional shelters and has a “low-barrier” admission process — without preconditions like a criminal-background check or documentation of established sobriety.
“Every client is unique. The main qualifier is that these are individuals who are sleeping outside, and that’s the only referral criteria that we have,” said Erin Madden of Breaking Ground.
CB7’s Health & Human Services Committee unanimously passed a resolution in support of the plan. The full board votes Tuesday.
“No one with a [sex offender] residency restriction will be allowed at this site,” Patrick Bonck, a Breaking Ground spokesman, said Friday night. He did not respond to further queries as to how they could ensure compliance.