Open 30K Hotel Rooms For Homeless During Coronavirus: Advocates

NEW YORK, NEW YORK — Staying home is a surefire way to stop the new coronavirus' spread but leaves out a large group of people — the homeless.

A group of advocates, elected officials and people who are homeless themselves sounded this message Tuesday and called for Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio to open up 30,000 hotel rooms for homeless New Yorkers.

Alfonzo Forney, who currently stays at Clark Thomas Men's Shelter on Randalls Island, told a video conference that the level of "depravity" inside the shelter over the virus is hard to articulate. He described beds 35 inches apart, more and more people coughing, no face masks and no sanitizer.

"Social distancing is something that is not even in their vocabulary," he said.

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Voices of Community Activists & Leaders hosted the Zoom conference, an event that capped off weeks of growing concern over the coronavirus' affect on the city's vulnerable homeless population.

Advocates increasingly called for officials to house people who are homeless inside empty hotel rooms and other spaces. Doing so would help alleviate overcrowding in shelters and give homeless people who want to avoid the poor conditions within that system another option other than the street, they argued.

And it appears New York City has more than enough empty space.

A Brooklyn group called Churches United For Fair Housing on Monday released a report that tallied 106,000 vacant hotel rooms, 13,000 illegal Airbnbs, about 4,100 empty condos and 727 units listed on the city's housing lottery.

Those numbers featured in the Tuesday news conference that Brooklyn City Councilman Stephen Levin, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and other city and state elected officials joined.

Park Slope's Councilman Brad Lander said the opening up housing to the homeless now could help them find a safe, decent and affordable place to live later.

"Maybe we can use this not just as a time for ending this pandemic crisis homeless New Yorkers face, but the homelessness crisis that homeless New Yorkers face," he said.

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