NY’s ‘human repair shop’
Sliwa idea to reuse camp for homeless
Republican mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa offered a novel solution to the perennial problem of homelessness in New York City: Reopen a massive work camp upstate that opened under Mayor La Guardia in the 1930s and closed more than a decade ago.
“There is so much empty space up there,” Sliwa said. “They can breathe fresh air, have good food, clothes, and it gives them a chance to get back on track.”
The Guardian Angels founder wants to restart Camp La Guardia, a 1,000-bed, 258-acre compound built out of a former women’s prison in Chester.
“It provided rehab for alcohol issues. You could be self-sustaining, and you can learn a trade,” Sliwa said, adding that residency would be on a voluntary basis. “Up there, there are very few temptations.”
The complex was the brainchild of its namesake, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, who got it going in 1934 to combat overflowing homelessness in the city caused by the depression. The progressive La Guardia called his camp a “human repair shop.”
For decades, New York City men went to and from the camp on regular buses. Those who hung around were encouraged to find work nearby as day laborers, or at a local chicken-plucking plant.
A German immigrant named Paul Brinn raised chickens and goats there for 30 years. Adam Kropiewnicki, a Pole who spoke no English, wandered the property for seven years before the city managed to rustle up a translator to ask what he wanted. The former asbestos handler said he just wished to return to Poland and be with his family. The nonprofit Volunteers of America purchased him a one-way ticket.
By 2007, cost-conscious critics like Mayor Michael Bloomberg were looking to decrease the shelter population. The property was sold to Orange County for $8.5 million and shut down. Though plans for development have been floated, Camp La Guardia has languished as ghostly, weed-choked ruin.
Not everyone remembers the camp as fondly as Sliwa.
The homeless “didn’t like it because they had connections in the city. It was 90 miles up there,” Meribeth Seaman, a former manager at the facility, told The Post. “A lot of them didn’t want to be up there. Some appreciated being up in the country, but it was inconvenient.”
As drug addiction and mental illness became more prevalent in the city homeless population, the residents of Chester also began to revolt. In 2002 a Camp La Guardia resident slashed a local in the face with a jagged bottle as she rode past on a bicycle.
In 1996, 12 residents were busted for running a crack cocaine delivery service in the town. That year saw more than 98 busts from local police on charges ranging from assault to shoplifting, according to a Post report from the time.
If not Camp La Guardia, Sliwa suggested more economically depressed areas of central New York might be open to a deal.