The city has postponed by a week the move-in date for a new homeless shelter that will be located at the Lower East Side Blue Moon Hotel shelter, new court papers show.
Lawyers for a group of LES residents and business owners who oppose the shelter said in a letter to a judge Wednesday that the city said it is delaying the opening of the 100 Orchard Street facility from Feb. 9 until Feb. 15.
The group of locals filed suit last month arguing that the facility — a 22-room converted former tenement building — would be too densely packed housing 70 homeless men, which could cause an outbreak of COVID-19 in the area.
The city has since said it only plans to use 46 beds at the facility and laid out a plan of action to combat the spread of coronavirus — including providing PPE, testing and vaccinations for residents and staff.
But Bethanne Goodwin, the owner of a nearby building and a plaintiff in the case, said she still has major concerns about how the shelter will be run following a local community board meeting from Jan. 7 and the city’s response in the case from last week.
At the community board meeting, the city’s Department of Homeless Services allegedly only provided “broad generalities” about how the shelter would be run. And the city has failed “to address the actual impact the shelter will have on the community,” Goodwin’s affidavit alleges.
And non-profit Not on My Watch — which is slated to run the facility — was not at the community board meeting to speak to specifics about the shelter, the affidavit claims.
“Addressing the actual operational issues of the proposed shelter was left to the absent NOMW representatives, who not only failed to appear at the community board meeting but have also decided not to appear in this proceeding or provide information and state their case,” Goodwin alleged.
Further, Goodwin says she is concerned with the fact that this will be the first time that NOMW will be running a homeless shelter and it only has a “shoe-string budget and is simply not capable financially to operate a shelter,” Goodwin alleges.
While the city has laid out a plan to meet the needs of residents and to provide security measures, “it is not DHS who will provide these services, but rather NOMW, who has been absent both from the community board meeting and this proceeding,” the affidavit claimed.
Goodwin said that she hoped the court would grant the plaintiffs’ bid for a preliminary injunction blocking the shelter.
City Hall and a rep with the city Law Department did not immediately return requests for comment.
