On Thursday, Heather J. Janik, a spokeswoman for the city’s homeless services agency, said an additional intake center would be opened in Manhattan to lessen demand at the proposed Brooklyn site. She said it would open “in tandem” with the new Brooklyn intake center, at the same time that the current central intake center, the Bellevue Men’s Shelter on the East Side, closed down. The site of the new center in Manhattan, which will be open 24 hours, has not been determined.
Bill de Blasio, the city councilman who leads the committee overseeing the homeless services agency, said more was needed, including guarantees from the city about improving the armory. “I think it’s going to take a lot more before folks in the neighborhood are satisfied,” he said.
One of the local organizers, Sandy Taggart, set a higher bar, saying, “We will absolutely not accept an intake center here.”
Read the full article here.
Courtesy of the NY Times
Friday, August 15, 2008
Concessions Made in Plan for Homeless in Brooklyn
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Homeless Intake Center Plan Provokes Broad Opposition
Community outrage at the city's plan to relocate the the homeless intake center for all five boroughs to the Bedford-Atlantic Armory in Crown Heights reached fever pitch last night at a special Community Board 8 meeting attended by Deputy Commissioner of the City’s Department of Homeless Services George Nashak and three of his staff members. In his introductory remarks, Nashak emphasized that as part of the plan to bring the intake center to the armory, Crown Heights would be benefiting from a net reduction in beds from 350 to 230. This didn't fly with the crowd...
Read the full article here.
Courtesy of brownstoner.com
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Momentum
Budget negotiations that are wrapping up over the next few days have the potential to kill this once and for all!
Read the letter signed by 24 state legislators urging Governor Patterson to kill the plan to relocate the Manhattan central intake center to the Bedford-Atlantic Armory shelter
here.
Courtesy of coalitionforthehomeless.org
Monday, June 16, 2008
Department of Homeless Services still not screening for sex offenders
Sex offenders are still being housed at shelters for homeless families a year after the problem was first exposed, a new report revealed Sunday.
State Sen. Jeff Klein (D-Bronx) charged that the Department of Homeless Services is still failing to screen applicants to make sure they are not on the Megan's Law registry, allowing serious sex offenders to be assigned to shelters that house children.
"It will take them five minutes to avoid a lifetime of trauma for a child who may be hurt by one of these individuals," said Klein outside the agency's Manhattan office.
Last year, Klein found six level 2 or 3 sex offenders who had registered family shelters as their addresses.
The latest report found five sexual predators giving family shelters as their address, though only two could be verified as still living at the facilities.
DHS officials cited the agency's legal obligation to shelter anyone who applies and policies that make it difficult to separate families who apply together.
Courtesy of the NY Daily News
Read the article here
Monday, May 19, 2008
FROM BELLEVUE TO BKLYN: HOMELESS CENTER TO MOVE
"This is a case of Brooklyn being dumped on," said Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, who opposes the plan because he thinks it's unfair to the community. Representatives from the area argue that by diverting the flow of homeless men to the Armory, the city could also be shifting more crime and congestion to the surrounding neighborhood.
It was only four years ago that the city, in its sweeping Uniting for Solutions Beyond Shelter action plan, actually pledged to increase the number of intake centers by decentralizing the intake process and creating three smaller facilities in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx. The 2004 plan said that the Manhattan intake center was flawed because "the large number of people that receive services there, the perception of the site as unsafe, and its inaccessibility to men living on the streets in other boroughs discourages some homeless men from seeking shelter."
However, since the implementation of a new homeless outreach plan in the fall of 2007, the city's priorities have changed. Hess says that DHS' ability to get the homeless into housing directly from the street (600 homeless people have moved off the street through the outreach program since last fall) makes the old notion of an intake center—whether one or three—outmoded. The goal is now to de-emphasize the intake center and reduce the number of shelter beds across the city, while promoting permanent housing for the homeless. Hess says the city has cut 1,200 shelter beds over the past two years, and aims to cut 600 more by next year.
Courtesy of citylimits.org (Read the full article here)
