‘IT’S FIGHT NIGHT’ IN QUEENS
Midtown East residents have spent months seeking help for a homeless man whose encampment at East 50th Street and Second Avenue has been a neighborhood nuisance for at least a year.
Repeated calls to cops and 311 have yet to spark the permanent removal of an unkempt, unpredictable vagrant known as Daniel.
Daniel, believed to be a 41year-old US Air Force veteran from Oregon who has bounced in and out of VA hospitals, may not have a home, but he has a cellphone and Instagram and Facebook accounts.
Local businesses such as The Press Box Pub next-door are suffering due to the loitering, which interferes with efforts to maximize outdoor dining amid COVID.
“People wouldn’t come because the smell was so bad,” said one neighbor.
A sidewalk shed, meant to protect the public after the facade of the Second Avenue building was found to be in bad shape, has instead created a haven for Daniel and other homeless drop-ins.
They sleep in the entranceways of the building’s shuttered storefronts — while well-intentioned passersby only feed the problem by leaving Morton Williams sandwiches, Entenmann’s cookies and jars of Nutella.
“Two evenings ago I walked back from Morton Williams and the guy was yelling and cursing and gesticulating wildly,” posted one frightened resident in a July 9 online discussion on Nextdoor.
“Soon we’ll look like Venice Beach, minus the water view,” snarked another, who said she had walked by the site and “was gagging over the stench. And of course there were piles of food that will likely be a trash heap by tomorrow. Whoever is dropping off the food should come by toA
morrow to clean up the trash created by their ‘donations.’ ”
Two NYPD cops from the 17th Precinct installed orange-colored netting closing off the entire site in May, but it was apparently gone the next morning.
Then, the Turtle Bay Association had the entire site powerwashed, but neither that nor city Sanitation summonses to the property owner prevented the area from being “trashed again,” residents griped.
The four-story building with 10 units at 940 Second Ave. was sold to a Long Island-based corporation, 300 East 50th Street Owner LLC, in April for $12 million, public records show.
Reggie Kronstadt, one of the owners, said he was aware of the homeless problem. “We’ve been trying to figure out what to do,” Kronstadt told The Post. “Part of it is we have scaffolding there. They just congregate underneath.”