Lucerne Residents Face New Fight As Downtown Group Opposes Move

UPPER WEST SIDE, NY — A new group has entered the conversation surrounding the homeless shelter residents still staying at The Lucerne on the Upper West Side.

It's a recently formed nonprofit called Downtown New Yorkers Inc.

The group, made up of downtown Manhattan residents, has hired a high-profile law firm in preparation to fight Mayor Bill de Blasio's plan to relocate homeless residents staying at The Lucerne to the Radisson Hotel in their neighborhood, according to The New York Post.

The new nonprofit is also well funded, as the Post reports that the group is looking to raise $500,000 to $750,000 to pay for the litigation process.

The nonprofit started after a Facebook group called Downtown NYCers for Safe Streets (Lower Manhattan) quickly gained popularity after the city announced it would be moving The Lucerne residents to downtown Manhattan.

The Facebook group currently has 2,600 members.

"It's no secret that the city has long used empty hotels as homeless shelters, most recently and famously the Lucerne Hotel," an About section reads on the Downtown New Yorkers Inc. website. "This failed experiment resulted in deeply rooted concerns and feats that have traveled beyond the original uptown location, and quickly into other neighborhoods across our great city."

"We more than disappointed that our elected officials quietly allowed the transition of this experiment into a permanent fixture on historic Wall Street without any notification, collection of input, or other reasonable considerations for what this means to our community," the About section added.

If this story sounds familiar, it's because it is.

On the Upper West Side, an Upper West Siders For Safer Streets Facebook group grew to over 15,000 members, and consistently shared images and complaints about people experiencing homelessness living in the neighborhood.

Members from the Facebook group eventually started their own nonprofit, the West Side Community Organization. It went on to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars to hire attorney Randy Mastro, a former deputy mayor in the Rudy Giuliani administration.

Mastro threatened to sue the city over its choice to keep shelter residents at the Upper West Side hotels, and a few days later, de Blasio announced he would be moving the residents out of the neighborhood.

According to Council Member Helen Rosenthal, the homeless residents staying at The Lucerne would be moved to a permanent shelter at the Radisson Hotel on 52 William Street. The move was first reportedly supposed to be completed by Oct. 5.

The Legal Aid Society condemned the new downtown nonprofit for its choice to raise money to fight the move to the Radisson Hotel shelter.

"Nothing sounds more Trumpian than a group of Wall Streeters crowdfunding $1 million to wage a war on some of our City's most vulnerable," Judith Goldiner, an attorney at the Legal Aid Society, wrote in a news release. "New Yorkers roundly denounced this playbook when it was trotted out by Upper West Side NIMBYs, and residents of lower Manhattan should have zero tolerance for brazen racism such as this."

Read More:

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• Dueling Hotel Homeless Shelter Petitions Divide Upper West Side
• UWS Community Board To Host Virtual Forum On Homeless Shelters
• UWS Pol Gives Update On Hotels Getting Used As Homeless Shelters
• 'We Do Not Have A Definitive Timeline': DHS Talks UWS Shelters
• Legal Org Calls UWS Residents 'Racist' In Handling Of Shelters
• City Will Move Homeless From The Lucerne
• Local Pols Rip Mayor's Decision To Move Homeless Out Of Lucerne
• Removal Of Homeless Residents From UWS Hotel Temporarily Halted
• Lucerne Residents On The Move Again, This Time Downtown