Community Board 7 sent out an email on August 20 sharing the following statement which was provided to them by the Department of Homeless Services.
“At a meeting with elected officials and community stakeholders on August 19, 2020, the City Department of Homeless Services stated that no other hotels on the Upper West Side will be considered for temporary emergency residence for individuals who are experiencing homelessness and coming from a shelter site in another part of NYC as part of the City’s initiative to prevent spread of COVID-19 in DHS shelters. For example, the Milburn Hotel and the Beacon will NOT be rented by DHS or any non-profit working with DHS. DHS has asked that we communicate this information as widely as possible.
All Homeless Lucerne Residents will be Relocated by End of September
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As of writing, the individual referenced above is listed on the sex offender registry as residing at 600 East 125th Street.
In addition to the two diverging petitions created in response to the influx of new hotel residents, the Upper West Siders For Safer Streets Facebook group, and the newly formed community group called The West Side Community Organization, another new Facebook group has recently been launched.
One of the committee members of the newly formed “UWS Open Hearts Initiative” is Daryl Wendy Strauss, who was also named “NY1’s New Yorker of the Week” in 2019 for having founded a non-profit called Mom’s Christmas Stocking.
Strauss tells us that UWS Open Hearts Initiative is “actively working to dispel the negative image of the new shelters thru compassion and getting to know the services the residents are being provided with and where they are lacking.” The new group has two events this weekend. You can learn more about the group here.
That they would name the Milburn and the Beacon explicitly in a statement that was so straightforward that it didn’t need a “for example” clause suggests that at least until recently those specific hotels were on the very much on the table. That would have been two more, again all within just two or three blocks of the Belleclaire, Lucerne, and several schools.
That’s all well and good. However, when are the ‘residents’ of the Lucerne, Belleclaire and Bellnord hotels going to be permanently removed From the neighborhood??? The COVID infection rate is all but non existent.
I find it hard to believe anything from the DHS and our illustrious elected officials……..
Living here as a Perm. Resident for over 40 years, this has been a nightmare for all our seniors, putting us all at risk of Covid Infection…
Building is filthy, no sanitizing at all. Testing done in lobby, but it is not MANDATORY for this homeless population, many that don’t even wear masks, putting us all at risk. Maybe a way to kill off long term elderly tenants so they can break up apartments for more hotel rooms? This is nothing less than criminal, and should be prosecuted as such.