The Calhoun School’s former lower school building at 160 West 74th Street (between Columbus and Amsterdam avenues) will soon be converted into a women’s shelter.
Advertisement
The building was sold earlier this year for $14 million to Bayrock Capital, a private investment firm. Cushman & Wakefield, which brokered the sale, said at the time that it would be converted into residences, per a report published in Crain’s New York Business.
Calhoun has since merged its lower school with Metropolitan Montessori School at 325 West 85th Street.
“This facility holds a capacity of 146 beds that will accommodate single adult women who are experiencing homelessness with safety, security, social services, and support in their time of need,” the Department of Social Services wrote to the office of Council Member Gale Brewer. “We expect that many of the residents at this shelter will have roots in this community and the Manhattan area more broadly.” The DSS also states the facility is expected to open in the fall of 2024.
More information was shared during Community Board 7‘s Preservation Committee meeting this week, where a proposal was made for the installation of a barrier-free chairlift at the building’s entrance, rooftop and rear additions, new mechanical equipment and more.
The service provider for the site will be Volunteers of America, “an anti-poverty organization working to end homelessness in the New York area by 2050.”
The non-profit’s interim president and CEO, Noelle Withers, referred to the site as a “temporary shelter” which will be equipped with both interior and exterior cameras and 24/7 security guards.
Advertisement
“DSS has approached us to operate the site because we have a strong reputation for running high quality programs and being very responsive to community concerns,” Withers said. “We also have a strong record of maintaining high standards for program quality, safety accountability.”
Site-specific details were scarce.
“In terms of services, what I can tell you now is that we will have a full team of social service support staff on site with the goal of exiting all of these women into permanent housing as quickly as possible, and we’ll have other services on site to help them achieve permanent housing, to link to employment, etc,” said Withers. “And so, again, this is very early in the project to be able to tell you definitively and exactly what staffing and program services will look like. But I can tell you that we plan to come back before the community board, together with the Department of Social Services to give a much more detailed presentation on the program.”
Volunteers of America currently operates several sites on the UWS: Rose House at 305 West 97th Street, Regent Family Residence at 2720 Broadway, and one of the more recently opened migrant shelters, which she says is housing one-hundred families.
odd.
Please explain your comment. Do you find it “odd” that women are provided housing?
DF:
No, but I find your leading question ignorant.
I guess you didn’t understand it then.
I’ll make it even simpler then, for you to be able to undersatnd:
What do you find ‘odd’ about women being sheltered?
DF,
Nothing. But your condescension again underlines your ignorance.
If you can’t figure out what I find odd, that’s not my failure.
You don’t want to explain what is “odd” to you, but find it ignorant to inquire what it is that you find odd.
You gotta’ be kidding!
DF,
You didn’t inquire, you stated what you assume I think odd, and then ignorantly doubled down on your leading question.
You’re the cliché of a bad courtroom lawyer, who doesn’t care about using facts for a prosecution or defense.
Think for a first time, what’s odd (not bad) about using this building as a shelter.
Since you won’t elaborate beyond “odd”, and invite me to speculate on what you mean by jost commenting “odd”, I will take a guess that you must not want women sheltered.
This neighborhood is overwhelmied with shelters and projects. This isn’t fair to the people that pay a lot of taxes to live here. What they should be doing is creating shelters in the suburbs. How about some of the bleeding hearts opening up some rooms in their homes for these lovely women?
Sheltered housing on the UWS has been reduced because coop and condo owners paid developers to empty the buildings that they now occupy.
What did you want to do with the poor who were kicked out of their housing? Be honest.
Isn’t there an east opposite the upper west side?
Yes there is.
The volume of shelters and contracts granted on the UWS is getting really odd. The concentration isn’t good for anyone. And all these tax breaks for the companies behind these contract deals, when the state is already in a major hole with the illegal migrant crisis, is going to fall on taxpayers.
This is just beginning to replace the housing that was eliminated when women and men were displaced by the UWS Gentrification and Cleansing Program.
Hear, hear! The myopia is astounding. I’ve lived on the Upper West Side since 1970. I remember the 70’s and 80’s (streets) between Broadway and Columbus with many Puerto Rican and Black families. They were not living in luxury condominiums but these were hard working class families. What happened to them? Where did they go? Why were they pushed out? Who redlined them? WHO committed such economic atrocity on working class people? Who cries for them now? Not the Argentum-monied classes. Did they tear their sack clothes and covered themselves with ashes upon learning of the steady, creeping, demise of the HOUSING of the working poor? Naaah, ashes on my cashmere, are you crazy?
NYMBYsts aside, it’s jolly good to see a building formerly housing pricey elementary school tuitionistas, now a women’s shelter. May this abode help many people in need of compassion and aid.
NIMBY? How very selfish of you wishing to hoard and harbor the pleasure of such gratifying goodwill all to yourself? instead of extending the seaon’s spirit of goodwill and priceless satisfaction of sharing the gift of commendable largess with the other fellow neighboring areas now langusihing and in need of your grand designs your humanitarian precepts and charity? For shame, sir. Why such Manhattan & outer bourough neighborhoods as UES/EEA, Murray Hill, Sutton Place, Tribeca, Hudson Yards, East Harlem , etc., are also positively seething with good will as your righteous self, and open hearts etc. So ungiving scrooge are you, uncaring to condemn your own very fellow citizens to charity-less moral darkness and blight of moral & philanthropic turpitude to not share such spiritual wealth and welfare helping them ease also new arrival huddled masses of undocumented souls of the great democrat suffage voting mass migrations project that is as well now within your powers to share? Think well on it as well as your eternal soul, sir, to forsake the grace of such tidings. NIMBY or shall we say NY-MBY. Indeed. such that so noble and disproportionately favor bears on our UWS and we not to share in the grotesque embarrasment of wealth & opportunity, salvation and goodwill to your fellow NYorkers, may Heaven confer grace of your repentance & forgive your covetous thoughts thereon & enjoy a blessed non-NIMBY holiday season; for soon you will get your ‘jolly’ holiday wish. (sic). Peace b upon us all.
I read a very interesting article recently about 2 builders/investors who purchase closed schools. Reason being, many are ideal for conversion into apartments, which they have done successfully.
I’d like to see some of these closed schools purchased by non-profits and some funds from our city and turned into affordable housing. Would be a lot more cost effective than paying for “temporary” housing.
We are being overwhelmed by Shelters, Residences. Who knows what comes next. All the progress we’ve made over the last 20 years to gentrify our neighborhood is out the window. Thanks so much Ms. Brewer.
Seriously? For every one of these buildings being repurposed for responsible use there have been several condos built that cater to the well off. On 84th & Broadway three affordable building were just demolished for a large luxury building which will have fewer units than were there before. A block north a senior residence was built where studios rent for $17,000 a month and up. Synagogues and churches have sold for luxury housing.
And yes, Patricia, these units sell. Why? Because the neighborhood remains desirable. Indeed, with the exception of fifth and park avenues this neighborhood is more expensive than the upper east side.
“All the progress we’ve made over the last 20 years to gentrify our neighborhood is out the window.”
For the last 20 years you have moved in and taken over the buildings that the poorer lived in.
I guess when you kicked them all to the curb, they had nowhere to go. So the poor remain.
It’s the Wild West. No planning, no master plan. It’s like this throughout much of NYC. The right hand doesn’t know what the left is doing.
Oh, the right surely knows what the left is doing.
LOL. I was talking agencies not politics, though I see your point.
Michael UWS – English please
Before you bring out the touches, please hear me out.
How is it like to live next to a shelter like this? Would love to hear from personal experience.
We moved to the US 2 years ago and we live few doors down from this location in a rent stabilized building. I have no experience with homelessness in my area (not in NYC scale for sure) and I do feel safe overall. But my husband suffers from PTSD and is very anxious and wants us to move. He’s really worried about crime and noise and reads all the scary statistics. I honestly don’t know what to think. On one side, it’s a women’s shelter and I kinda take it as part of living in a big great city and love our building and community, on the other hand, I’m concerned about my husbands mental health and well being.
Did anyone experienced this? What can I expect?