Mayor Still Shunning Homeless Woman After Gym Confrontation

PARK SLOPE, BROOKLYN — A homeless woman who asked the mayor for help while he stretched at the Park Slope YMCA came to City Hall Monday afternoon expecting to meet with him, but once again was told he would not listen to her pleas for more affordable housing.

"He did not want to talk to me today," said 72-year-old Nathylin Flowers Adesegun. "Here we are, still no mayor."

Adesegun made headlines earlier this month when she tried to ask the mayor to help her and 62,000 other New Yorkers who are homeless. Video shows de Blasio telling the 72-year-old woman "I'm doing my workout" before standing up and walking away.

Adesegun was granted a meeting with two representatives from the Mayor's office and one from the Department of Social Services at City Hall on Monday afternoon, but they declined to commit to Adesegun's request for 30,000 affordable housing units for homeless New Yorkers.

The representatives from City Hall and Social Services either did not respond to Patch's request for comment or declined to provide one, but Adesegun said she was told, "We'll take this under consideration."

"He ran away twice," Adesegun said. "We're gonna keep at him until he does something substantive and transparent."

Had de Blasio made an appearance, Adesegun said she would asked him to double the number of affordable housing units made available to homeless people through his Mandatory Inclusionary Housing to 10 percent.

"Make it equitable at least for the people who need it the most," she said.

A Mayor's Office spokesperson said in a statement, "This mayor has the most aggressive affordable housing and homeless plans in city history. We've helped nearly 100,000 people avoid or move out of shelter with housing assistance, and almost 10% of the apartments created and preserved through our plan are dedicated to homeless New Yorkers."

Adesegun has been homeless for three years since the cost of her rent stabilized apartment spiked from $475-per-month to $1319.16, which the retired office manager could not afford.

She now lives in a room she shares with three other women at a Long Island City women's shelter where one resident was recently doused with nail polish remover and set on fire, Adesegun said.

"We have many people with psychiatric problems are in the same shelter," Adesegun explained. "It's dangerous ... It's horrible."

That's why she and advocates from VOCAL-NY — a homeless advocacy group that joined Adesegun at the YMCA encounter — have decided to organize a march on Gracie Mansion on Oct. 24 at 11 a.m.

They expect hundreds of people to join them on a march from East 86th Street and Second Avenue to the Mayor's Upper East Side home.

"That's a nice house," said Adesegun. "I'm going to his house to say, 'Can I come stay with you?'"

Photo by Kathleen Culliton