About a month after two transitional homeless shelters housing 200 homeless families opened on West 95th Street, some residents and local elected officials are still vocally opposed to the facilities.

The two buildings—at 316 and 330 W. 95 St.—are on a residential block between West End Avenue and Riverside Drive. They serve as emergency shelters—opened because the city needed more beds to support the growing homeless population.

Local residents argue that housing the homeless is not the intended purpose for the two buildings and that the neighborhood, already home to several other shelters, shouldn’t have to take on another one. A nighttime fire that broke out Aug. 28 on the fourth floor of 316 W. 95th St. has heightened concerns for some about the facilities. Other residents are concerned about the shelters’ close proximity to a school and a playground.

Stephanie Martinez, 19, who lives with her family on the Upper West Side, is one such resident.

“It’s a bad idea,” Martinez said. “I’ve been living here for 10 years, and my brother goes to school at P.S. 75. We don’t know the backgrounds [of the shelter residents].”
But one middle-aged man who was moving into one of the buildings last week with his son said that neighbors should think twice before complaining about the shelters.
“I don’t have empathy for the $100-250,000 per year homeowner,” the man said. “The poor used to be up and down the street here. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.”
But other residents and local electeds insist that it’s far from a “not in my backyard” attitude that informs their opposition to the shelters. The concern is more about the type of buildings the homeless families are moving into, and who should live there. These are single-room occupancy buildings (SROs)—small individual apartments with a shared bathroom and kitchen. Some Upper West Siders say these buildings should be occupied by low-income rent payers—yet SRO owners and landlords are able to make much more money by renting the space to Homeless Services, which pays a monthly rent of $3,000 for each room.

“The buildings should be for ordinary New York rent-paying people,” said Avi, a neighborhood resident who declined to give his last name. “The buildings should not be fodder for real estate speculators who have managed to raise rents in this city to levels unaffordable to ordinary people.”

Upper West Side Councilmember Gale Brewer agrees, and she, along with other local leaders, voiced her opposition to Homeless Services even before the shelters opened up.
“These buildings we want to be permanent housing,” Brewer said. “We want similar residents who have longstanding community ties to be residents.”

Mark Diller, the chairperson of Community Board 7, said that the use of the SROs as homeless facilities is counterproductive when it comes to solving the overarching goal—reducing homelessness and building up the affordable housing stock for local residents.

“The problem is that by the shelter taking up these units, you’re eliminating 200 units of otherwise affordable housing,” Diller said. “The SRO Law Project tries to make sure that what’s left of the affordable housing stock is preserved. It’s very troubling. … You want everyone to be able to live permanently in the community. [You’re creating] the problem that you’re trying to solve.”

Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal, who represents the Upper West Side, shares Diller’s viewpoint, adding that by placing the homeless in these buildings, the city is rewarding Robert Hess, a former DHS commissioner who now operates the shelters, for his multiple housing violations as a landlord.

“This homeless problem is just made worse by the city recycling people into units that should be permanent housing, and rewarding someone who breaks the law,” Rosenthal said.

The middle-aged homeless man said that this year’s elimination of the Advantage Program, a rental subsidy that helped to pay one or two years of rent support to eligible households, led to a sharp decline in the neighborhood’s affordable housing.

“There is no reasonable housing program, period,” he said, adding that opponents of the West 95th Street shelters should advocate for affordable low-income housing in the neighborhood.

According to the Fair Share Doctrine, each community must do its part in providing for the poor. Diller believes that the Upper West Side has more than its share of homeless residences: In the West 90s, the Narragansett, the Senate, Camden Hotel and Yale/Rose, to name a few, already provide housing for the homeless; and 21 percent of the city’s vulnerable population is housed on the Upper West Side, Diller said. Because the 95th Street shelters are emergency transitional housing, Homeless Services was able to bypass its usual neighborhood Fair Share review.

“This is us saying we’ve done our fair share several times over,” Diller said. “They’re using emergency certification as an excuse not to do the public review.”

Heather Janik, the DHS spokeswoman, said the agency is doing its part in communicating with the community.

“Our Agency has a legal mandate to provide temporary, emergency shelter to homeless individuals in need, and opened a shelter on West 95th Street so that our clients can live and be served with dignity and respect,” Janik said. “We have been actively communicating with elected officials from the beginning of this process and engaged in open dialogue with community leaders, and will maintain positive relations with residents in the surrounding neighborhood.”

Photo by David Shankbone, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

A fire beneath a subway tunnel just north of DeKalb Avenue station caused line delays and closures Tuesday evening.

The two-alarm blaze began around 3 p.m., and was caused by a shorted cable beneath a manhole, according to FDNY. Authorities removed power from the station as firefighters arrived on the scene to extinguish the flames.

“The firefighters were battling a blaze that was so deep in the tunnel, they could barely see,” said ABC’s Traffic Center. “It was so hot, so smoky down there, that some firefighters were overcome by it, needed oxygen when they got out, and all of them needed to cool off after a fire ripped through the afternoon rush hour.”

DeKalb is a Brooklyn transportation hub, so the B, D, F, N, Q and R lines were all affected: M.T.A. paused all B, D, N, Q and R service between Manhattan and Brooklyn, and redirected the F line.

FDNY declared the fire under control at 6:17 p.m., though service irregularities lasted into the night. Everything was back to normal this morning.

According to an M.T.A. spokesperson, no injuries or trapped straphangers were reported.

Photo by Joscarfas, courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons.

Don’t panic!

The fire that reportedly broke out on 1 World Trade Center’s 88th floor this morning was just welding, FDNY officials said.

84 firefighters rushed to the ground zero construction site at about 7:45 a.m. Steve Coleman, a spokesperson for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, told the Associated Press that the fire report was called in by a member of the public.

The crew investigated the tower and found no fire. Flames from welding equipment that were visible to passersby 88 floors below caused the false alarm, FDNY Battalion Chief Kevin Brennan told CBS. The equipment was turned off, and the flames disappeared.

Construction began on the 104-story skyscraper — the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere — in 2006, and it is expected to be completed in 2014. Check out what the final product will look like here.

Fire fighters put out a blaze that started on the roof of 155 W. 71st St. in the early hours of Aug. 8.

Calls about a fire in the six-story brick building came in to 911 around 4 a.m. The flames escalated into a three-alarm fire. There were 168 firefighters on the scene, eight of whom were taken to Roosevelt Hospital with minor injuries.

There were no reported injuries among the tenants, which includes Borough President Scott Stringer.

He recently moved into the West 71st Street building.

His office did not return a request for comment about any damage to his apartment.

The fire was contained at 5:26 a.m., according to the Fire Department.

“It looked like the whole roof of one of the buildings was on fire,” said Bonny Kahane, who snapped photos of the blaze from her third-floor apartment across the street. “It was roaring.”

The Fire Department is investigating two fires in the same building, emanating from the same apartment, only months apart.

The department most recently responded to a report about a fire at 100 W. 72nd St. and Columbus Avenue June 9. The call was received at 7:11 a.m., and fire fighters got the blaze under control about a half-hour later. A firefighter sustained minor injuries and was taken to Roosevelt Hospital.

The fire broke out in an apartment on the sixth floor—the same spot where firefighters put out flames April 8, noted 1010 WINS, the AM news radio station.

“Right now, both incidents are under investigation. Until that investigation is complete we won’t have anything further,” an FDNY spokesperson said.

The fire department got the call at 7:01 a.m. that day and sent 60 fire fighters in 12 units to the restaurant, at 267 Columbus Avenue between West 72nd and 73rd streets. The fire started in the rear of the one-story building and was under control by 7:33 a.m.

A spokesperson at the fire department said the cause is unknown.

Owner Emile Aklen suspects it was an electrical issue because the restaurant was closed for business at the time. His staff spent the next several days cleaning up from the fire and water damage.

Aklen, who also owns a falafel place at 403 Amsterdam Ave. between West 79th and 80th streets, said he hopes his insurance company will quickly assess the damage so the restaurant can reopen.

“It’s regrettable to be closed on the eve of a holiday,” Aklen said. “We’d like to expedite the work to resume operation for people on the West Side who have been loyal to us for 14 years.”

“He’s the hero of the day,” said Casanas, who remains hopeful that Comida will return. “Whenever something like this happens I look at it in a positive light, such as creative destruction.”

The owners of Comida, which opened in March, declined to comment. Casanas said he’s hoping to get the place cleaned up quickly.

The corner property has had a string of bad luck, and seems unable to sustain a restaurant tenant. Charlie Palmer’s cheap-chic Kitchen 82, which opened in 2003, was taken over by Irish pub TJ O’Brien in 2006. The pub lasted about a year, and was replaced by Madaleine Mae, a Southern-style grill and breakfast joint, in 2007.

Casanas, for one, thinks future tenants need to focus more on catering to residents, rather than destination diners.

“It is my view that when the right combination of management and concept come in, it will succeed,” he said. “It’s a neighborhood restaurant. You have to create it for the neighborhood first and foremost before you cater to other people.”

Photo by Andrew Schwartz