UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — The Upper East Side's newest homeless shelter, which sparked volatile public hearings and faced legal challenges when the proposal for the corner of First Avenue and East 61st Street was first announced, has quietly opened this week, Patch has learned.
A source from the New York City Department of Homeless Services said the new women's shelter opened this week officially and has begun taking in residents.
The shelter, run by Housing Solutions of New York, will be filled up slowly over time, rather than all at once, the department said.
"We are always proud to bring new shelter resources online to serve our neighbors in need," Nicholas Jacobelli, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeless Services, told Patch. "We continue to work to ensure that every community has the necessary safety net resources to support New Yorkers experiencing unsheltered homelessness and remain committed to creating a more dignified, effective, and equitable shelter system."
The shelter, when it was announced in January, was a men's shelter, but after neighborhood outcry, Council Speaker Julie Menin changed it to a women's shelter.
In March, opponents sued to block the project, arguing that the shelter would negatively impact the area and that city officials failed to provide adequate transparency before it was announced. But a judge ultimately denied those challenges, clearing the way for the shelter to open.
The project has divided the neighborhood. Supporters of the shelter said the Upper East Side should play a role in addressing the city's homelessness crisis and that the planned facility would provide stable housing and services for women in need.
"People often complain about people living on the streets, but then when a solution is provided, they don't want that either," Erica Bersin, an Upper East Sider and volunteer with the nonprofit Open Hearts Initiative, told Patch.
However, critics of the plan said the city failed to adequately inform or consult the community, and have concerns about the shelter's potential impact on the neighborhood's quality of life.
"We just feel that there was no transparency. The way that they're rolling this out is like ninjas in the night," Alina Bonsell, a Republican candidate for State Senate on the Upper East Side, told Patch.
The shelter will be classified as a "general population" shelter, meaning that it won't be a shelter for people with drug addiction or mental illness, and roughly 78 percent of the residents will be employed at any given time, Patch previously reported.
All of the residents will have case managers and social workers assigned to them. No men or children will be at this site. All of the residents will be referred through the city's Department of Homeless Services.
The shelter will operate across an eight-floor building, with three floors dedicated to dormitory-style rooms sleeping 13 to 14. The residents will share bathrooms and showers on each dormitory floor.
The shelter has 24/7 security officers, as well as staff. There is also a floor for offices, with 46 staff members, and a level for the cafeteria. The women at the shelter will be served three meals a day, as well as snacks.
The roof of the building will be an outdoor space for the residents to gather, to prevent loitering in front of the building during the day.
The shelter will be drug and alcohol free, though smoking cigarettes is permitted on the roof, Rivera said. All residents will be required to follow an 11 p.m. curfew. The lease for the shelter is 30 years.
For questions, email Miranda.Levingston@Patch.com.
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