Another Shelter Battle Brews In Hell's Kitchen As New Group Forms

HELL’S KITCHEN, NY — The next battle over the city’s temporary hotel shelter program may play out in Hell’s Kitchen, where residents this week escalated their demands that the city reduce the density of shelters in the neighborhood and take better care of the people living inside them.

“The rapid relocation of so many homeless in our community has created unintended consequences,” Delores Rubin, a lifelong Hell’s Kitchen resident and former community board chair, said at a news conference Monday.

Speakers at the news conference on Ninth Avenue described a burgeoning drug market around 36th and 37th streets, where the city has situated more than 800 temporary shelter beds in two former hotels, according to a report by Community Board 4.

The residents are toeing a delicate line, seeking to distinguish themselves from Upper West Side groups who have attracted derision from some corners for resorting to lawsuits and sometimes using dehumanizing language in their push to move the Lucerne Hotel shelter from their neighborhood.

“We are a neighborhood that does not say no. We welcome social services, we welcome people that are having difficult times in their lives,” resident Joe Restuccia said Monday.

“We’re not a lawsuit community, we’re not a community that says no. We’re a community that says, ‘Fix it.’”

Monday’s news conference announced the formation of the Hell’s Kitchen Neighborhood Coalition, a new group composed of several block associations, businesses and local nonprofits formed in response to the public safety concerns.

Beyond drug use, some shelter residents have behaved aggressively toward passersby and local business owners, while public urination and defecation have also become more visible, according to the coalition.

The speakers said they were open to keeping the shelters in the neighborhood, but argued that they should be spread out and that their residents should receive better care from shelter providers to minimize drug use and attend to mental health crises.

Restuccia singled out NAICA, a Bronx-based nonprofit that runs the shelter inside the former DoubleTree Hotel on West 36th Street, which he said has spurred the most frequent visits by police and emergency workers.

As a counterpoint, he pointed to another temporary shelter at the Watson Hotel on West 57th Street, which is run by the nonprofit Black Veterans for Social Justice and which has been the source of far fewer safety complaints.

“We are a welcoming district, we are a welcoming neighborhood,” said Restuccia, who works as the executive director of the Clinton Housing Development Company, an affordable housing developer.

Hell’s Kitchen already had a high number of shelter beds before the pandemic — more than 1,000, as well as 1,300 supportive housing apartments, according to the coalition. Since the city began moving homeless New Yorkers into hotels to reduce crowding in shelters, Midtown Manhattan has hosted the most shelters of any neighborhood in the city, according to an August report by NY1.

Crime has dropped over all this year in the two police precincts that cover Hell's Kitchen, according to NYPD statistics, although reports of burglaries and car thefts have both risen compared to last year.

Community Board 4 has sent at least four letters to the Department of Homeless Services requesting action but received no commitments in return, members have said. DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Still Restuccia said he is hopeful that the coalition’s conciliatory approach will win them a meeting with the city.

“We’re not the Upper West Side,” Restuccia said.

Previous coverage by Patch:

• Hell's Kitchen Board Implores City To Reduce Hotel Shelters
• Mayor Pledges To Move Homeless From Hell's Kitchen Hotels