Midtown Board Members Harassed Over Planned Hotel Shelter

MIDTOWN MANHATTAN, NY — Members of a Midtown community board have reported being personally targeted by opponents of a planned shelter for homeless families, after letters were sent to the members' neighbors this week accusing them of being complicit in the city's "vagrancy problem."

Rich Mintz, a member of Community Board 6, said the letters were delivered Thursday, apparently to hundreds of residents of his building in the Gramercy area. Last month, the board's housing and homelessness committee heard a presentation from the city about a planned shelter for homeless families at the Renwick Hotel.

Similar letters, rife with inaccuracies and spelling errors, were also delivered Thursday to neighbors of two other people on CB6: committee chair Carin Van Der Donk, and assistant district manager Cody Osterman.

"This is Rich Mintz, he lives in your building," reads the letter sent to Mintz's neighbors. "We are sending you this because he and others on Community Board 6 have voted to allow a PERMANENT homeless shelter at the Renick Hotel at 40th and Lexington Avenue in Murray Hill."

In fact, the board had no say in the placement of the shelter, and did not take any vote during last month's committee meeting, when representatives from the city's Department of Homeless Services laid out plans for it.

Oh wow - so much incorrect in this mass mailing to my neighborhood in here, although I guess I cannot complain they used a 20+ year old photo of me. Someone took all this time to create this, but couldn't bother fact checking it? pic.twitter.com/tn8ppllen7
— Carin van der Donk (@vanderDonkCarin) December 4, 2020

Mintz said the letter-writers appeared to misunderstand the job of a community board, which is charged with representing a neighborhood's permanent residents as well as those just passing through.

"That requires us also to take into account people who are homeless, who are just as much New Yorkers as anyone else," Mintz told Patch on Friday.

Board chair Kyle Athayde condemned the letters in a statement Friday, calling them "a cowardly and petulant act of harassment that will not be tolerated."

Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer said in a statement: "Community Board members are members of the public who volunteer their time, knowledge, and passion freely to help their community."

"These letters are disturbing efforts at intimidation, and my office has sent them to the NYPD to help ensure the safety of the subjects of these letters," she added.

Opponents say they weren't involved

The board mostly expressed support for the shelter during last month's meeting, and some members asked for suggestions about how best to welcome their new neighbors once the Renwick residents move in.

It was not clear who wrote or sent the unsigned letters. In recent weeks, a group calling itself Save Murray Hill NYC has sprung up to oppose the shelter, but the group told Patch in an email that it was not involved.

"Save Murray Hill NYC condemns any types of personal attacks of this kind," wrote a group spokesperson, who did not identify themselves.

The city aims to open the Renwick shelter by Dec. 15, housing as many as 170 adult families in the former hotel. It will indeed be permanent, unlike the temporary hotel shelters that the city has created to reduce crowding during the pandemic, and which have set off an intense backlash in neighborhoods like the Upper West Side.

The letters go on to speculate that the shelter could cause neighborhood home prices to drop while criticizing officials for not holding public hearings in advance, asking, "why is it ex-convicts and addicts get to live in Murray Hill?"

A DHS official told the board last month that "adult family shelters are some of the proudest work that we do," noting that about 50 families had moved out of such shelters so far this year — signaling progress in the city's efforts to help such families find more permanent housing.

Anticipating concerns by neighbors, presenters stressed that the shelter will be accompanied by a number of safety precautions, including 24/7 security, a dedicated phone line for community members to ask questions, and a "good neighbor policy" that each resident will be required to sign, prohibiting littering, loitering, playing loud music and other disruptive behavior.

The Renwick shelter will be operated by CORE Services Group, a nonprofit that runs dozens of shelters around the city. As of July 2019, the city's overall shelter population stood at more than 58,000, including about 19,300 adults in families.

Previous coverage: Midtown's Renwick Hotel To Be Converted Into Homeless Shelter