Hell's Kitchen Senior Homes Must Be Preserved In Sale, Pols Say

HELL'S KITCHEN, NY — A housing nonprofit that is selling a recently-opened senior living facility in Hell's Kitchen should offload the property to another nonprofit that will preserve affordable housing at the site, elected officials said Thursday in a press conference outside the facility.

Seniors living at the Riverview Senior Independent Living complex on West 49th Street and 10th Avenue have been "anxious, depressed" and are having trouble sleeping at night since receiving notice in December that their landlords were selling the building and that residents would need to make arrangements to move, 91-year-old resident leader Gabrielle Wager said Thursday.

"Come April 1 I think that most of us will be going, as hard as it is," Wagner said. "None of us want to leave, some of us have a harder time than others."

Many residents have moved out of the building since December but some are still holding out hope that they won't have to leave. Elected officials estimate that about 20 residents remain in the building. The most recent certificate of occupancy for the property says the building has 77 units.

Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer said Thursday that nonprofit organizations have expressed interest in buying the building, but that owner Homes for the Homeless has not committed to the idea in talks with her office and other elected officials.

"We see housing for seniors disappearing right before our eyes, and we're not going to let it happen here at Riverview," Brewer said. "This building was renovated specifically to provide housing for older adults, and we don't want it to be sold because we don't want to force dozens of residents out of their homes with little notice."

Elected officials called into question the mission of Homes for the Homeless, itself a nonprofit organization. State Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal said Thursday that the group was acting as if it was a for profit company and State Senator Brad Hoylman said he's yet to see a more "egregious" example of a nonprofit mistreating its residents.

Homes for the Homeless has stated that the organization is selling the Riverview building because it is financially unsustainable. The organization's CEO Ralph da Costa Nunez told the New York Times that the group lost "several million dollars" since converting the building to a senior home after losing a contract for a homeless shelter at the site. The executive said that the building won't be closed until April, but no firm move-out date has been set for current residents.

A spokesperson for Homes for the Homeless told Patch that the organization was never able to fill more than a third of the units at Riverview.

"After having spent millions of dollars on proactive marketing, promotions, and operations of Riverview Senior independent Living it has never been able to achieve a steady occupancy of more than a third. As a result, Riverview is in the process of phasing down its operation. In fact, the financial drain of the Riverview has already forced us to cancel one of our sleep away programs for homeless children," Homes for the Homeless spokesperson Linda Bazerjian said in a statement.

The organization's statement did not mention the possibility of selling the facility to a housing nonprofit or agreeing to a deed restriction to limit use of the site for senior housing.

Elected officials said Thursday that the nonprofit never came to the local community board or any one of the neighborhood's lawmakers for help.

"The owner did not come to any of us for help with maintaining the building as it is and why is that? Because we certainly could put our heads together and our budgets together and find them assistance," Rosenthal said Thursday. "They didn't really want any assistance."