Despite a setback from Hurricane Sandy, the historic shelter looks ahead to a new facility and a robust Thanksgiving

By Sophia Rosenbaum

The New York City Rescue Mission has a lot to be thankful for post-Sandy.

“It’s a little bit of a hardship to be blocks away from the worst of it,” said Joe Little, the mission’s director of community relations. “But, we were able to sustain some continuity for four or five days while being in the middle of mild-mannered chaos.”

While the mission lost power for four days, they continued to feed hundreds of people, including what Little calls the “perennial homeless” and the “temporarily homeless.”

The mission, which is tucked behind a construction project just south of Canal Street, helps those who have slipped between society’s cracks to find refuge, offer a meal on their plate and a bed to sleep in at night—24 hours a day, seven days a week.

“It’s a sanctuary of hope,” said Martin Bowman, a reformed cocaine addict who now greets anyone who walks through the doors with a smile as the mission’s front desk supervisor. “It challenges your worldview and hopefully starts people on a path to transformation.”

Bowman, who has been affiliated with the mission for 12 years, is just one of their many success stories.

Lost in a sea of scaffolding, the mission is getting a top-to-bottom makeover. With long sheets of plastic serving as makeshift doors and the resonating sound of drills and hammers, Bowman said he’s eagerly awaiting the new six-story building, which is still on track to be complete in early 2014 despite the setback from Sandy.

Many New Yorkers in dire straits can’t welcome the new construction soon enough. Statistics from the 2011 Census Bureau detail a rising poverty rate in New York City, which is currently at 20.9 percent, up nearly one percentage point from last year. In raw numbers, that means close to 1.7 million people fall below the poverty level of $22,811 for a family of four in New York City. Rising poverty paired with our current national economic crisis translates to more people out of work, out of money and out of a place to live.

For the mission, this means more people to help. Packaged as a soup kitchen, a pantry and a shelter, the mission offers a variety of 24/7 services, from three meals a day to overnight lodging to counseling, and men-only 12-step programs for recovering alcoholics and drug addicts.

Harry Benjamin, 58, has been coming to the food pantry for years because he and his wife do not bring in enough money to support his two children.

“I come here to eat,” Bejamin said, ”so that I can have enough food before my next check comes.”
Bowman said all the security guards who work with Benjamin come to the mission for pantry packages to sustain their families.

From 2 p.m. to 3:30 p.m., people arrive in spurts to claim two plastic bags stuffed with staples like rice, pasta, canned fruits and canned vegetables. Some unexpected treats like cookies and chocolate toffee also make their way into the bags through donations from Starbucks and other local bakeries.

From July to September, over 900 people volunteered at the mission to help serve the 500 people they help a day, according to David Knoche, the mission’s volunteer manager and administrative assistant. From spaghetti and meatballs to a full Thanksgiving meal, Knoche said numbers are up for those using soup-kitchen services for their daily meals since the 2008 recession.

“It takes a village to make things happen,” he said.

While he may not look it in his professional attire of a purple button-up shirt and black slacks, Knoche is a recovered alcoholic and dope addict. He has been clean for over 30 years and attributes much of his success to God.

The mission focuses on religious and spiritual guidance to help people escape drugs and homelessness. James Rowntree, 53, has been in the 12-step program for seven months, and is homeless, but not an addict.

“I’ve got no family, no money, no place to live,” he said in a British accent. “I believe that God wants me to be here.”

People at the mission like Rowntree break the mold of what most people think of when they hear the word “homeless.”

The same is true for Bowman. Although he was raised by a “solidly middle-class family,” his egocentric tendencies eventually tied him in the drug scene.

“My real addictions were power,” he said. “I had no intention of helping the homeless at all,” he added with a laugh.

But, after the tables were turned and Bowman experienced first-hand what it was like to be homeless, he dedicated his life to helping those in need.

“The real struggles in life are universal,” he said. “If you’re a homeless addict, we provide help. If you’re a businessman, we provide help. This place does so much more than just provide people with a meal.”

Little said that despite minor setbacks from Sandy, they are still gearing up for their 14th annual Great Thanksgiving Banquet, where he expects at least 1,200 people—up 200 people from 2011.
“We have a bigger space this year for the celebration,” he said. “So we think it will be bigger this year. Also, I think no matter what your socioeconomic status is, people are very aware of the plight of the homeless right now because of Sandy.”

Neighborhood Tradition

Harry Goldberg Jr. encourages the crowd to buy shoes during the grand re-opening of Harry’s Shoes on the Upper West Side. It’s all smiles in the background from onlookers including Council Member Gale A. Brewer and a photo of the the founder’s son and Harry Jr.’s grandfather, Joseph Goldberg.

Community Board  Rejects Homeless Shelter Placements
In the latest move of the ongoing and heated battle between Upper West Side residents and the Department of Homeless Services, Community Board 7 voted unanimously to adopt a resolution opposing the placement of two emergency shelters on West 95th Street in buildings that were designed for Single Room Occupancy (SRO) use. The full board meeting was dominated by talk of the shelters, which opened in August and have the capacity for 400 homeless individuals, as board members, elected officials’ representatives and over 100 residents expressed their outrage over DHS’s handling of the placement in an area they say is already oversaturated with special services and homeless shelters.

Parents wanted to know what protections DHS has in place in and around the shelters for children playing in the neighborhood and walking to and from school. One resident, Andrew Rubin, said that he moved his family to the Upper West Side from Chelsea several years ago because the opening of a methadone clinic near their previous apartment had changed the neighborhood for the worse. “I was shocked like everyone else when all the sudden a homeless shelter opened across the street,” he said. He described problems that others echoed, including urine smells, lack of security around the facilities, litter and people loitering around the entrances.

Another resident, Gwen Rivers, said that she and her neighbors felt ambushed.

“We feel like a bomb went off. This happened during the summer when no one was around to complain,” she said.

The board also pointed out that there are currently 71 permanent residents living in these two SROs at 316 and 330 W. 95th St. who are not being properly accommodated, and that the city is paying an exceedingly high price—roughly $3,000 per unit per month—to the landlord and contracted operator of the shelters. The resolution passed also listed a myriad other objections, especially focusing on the lack of transparency and short-sightedness of the entire placement process.

Raccoons Rampant in Central Park
Last month, Upper West Side Council Member Gale Brewer wrote to the Parks Department to get some answers to a curious concern her office had been hearing about—the raccoon population in Central Park. Apparently the critters had been spotted at several playgrounds throughout park, including the Rudin Playground near West 96th Street, and parents were concerned that the rascals might pose a danger to little ones.

The Central Park Conservancy responded, assuring the public that the raccoons are a natural part of the park’s ecosystem and not to be automatically feared, though the raccoon population hovers around 500.

Doug Blonsky, the CEO of the Conservancy and the Central Park administrator, assured Brewer in a letter that there haven’t been any confirmed reports of rabies in the raccoon population, and that seeing them out in the daytime is likely more a symptom of bad habits of the people who feed them than of a disease.

“We are also at a time of year when young raccoons are being extricated from nests by parents, so we are seeing an increasing number of raccoons during the day right now who are looking for homes,” Blonsky said in the letter. “Food is probably more important than shelter in these warm months, so they will go the easiest route to a snack.”

He said that while odd behavior—irregular gait, lethargy, looking disoriented—in raccoons should be reported to a Park worker on sight, the best way to handle raccoons is to give them a wide berth and don’t feed them, even if they stand with their adorable little paws outstretched.

Gottfried Hosts Event for Immigrants
Assembly Member Richard Gottfried, along with East Side state Sen. Liz Krueger, is sponsoring an event called “Immigrants Connect” on Monday, Sept. 16, from 1 to 3 p.m. at the American Red Cross, 520 W. 49th St. The event will provide information on services available for immigrants who own or are interested in starting their own businesses, citizenship and naturalization processes, and health and government resources available. The event is also sponsored by the Housing Conservation Coordinators and the New York State Department of Labor.

New Play at  West-Park Church
A Festival of Fools theater company is presenting an original play, The Zeal of the Zealot: Being the Tale in Which Impostor Finds his Faith, at the Balcony Theater at West-Park Presbyterian Church, 165 West 86th Street. The play, written in verse and set to original music, follows the character the Indomitable Impostor as he swordfights and soliloquizes his way from false faith to true madness, surrounded by imaginary heralds and a chorus of nuns. The play is set on a classical thrust stage that was previously home to the Riverside Shakespeare Company, inside the individually landmarked church. Sept. 13, 14, 15, 20, 21 and 22 at 8 p.m. Tickets $10, $8 for students/seniors. Visit www.afestivaloffools.com for tickets and information.

UWS Historic District Extension Official
The City Planning Commission voted last week to approve an expansion of the Upper West Side’s historic districts with the addition of the Riverside-West End Historic District Extension 1. The extension stretches from West 79th to West 87th Streets between West End Avenue and Broadway.

“West End Avenue is one of the world’s most important ensembles of residential buildings, as architecturally harmonious and perfectly scaled to its spacious boulevard as Park Avenue,” said Council Member Gale Brewer in a statement praising the designation. “Regrettably, West End’s buildings are being demolished one by one. Unless we act, it will become just another hodge-podge of highrise warehouses, occupied by people who think of New York as a motel on the way to somewhere else.”

There are two other historic district extensions on the Upper West Side that are expected to pass the CPC later this year.

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 iheartfishtown, courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons.

When the Department of Homeless Services (DHS) announced in July that it would soon move 200 homeless families into two residential West 95th Street Buildings, community members, elected officials and Community Board 7 (CB7) objected. The buildings were designed as single room occupancy units for low income residents, they argued, and were not equipped to provide treatment for the homeless’ large population of addicts and the mentally ill.

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, City Council Member Gale Brewer, Assembly member Linda Rosenthal and Community Board 7 chair Mark Diller sent a letter to DHS Commissioner Seth Diamond at the time asking him to suspend efforts to place the homeless families in the two buildings, 316 and 330 West 95th Street.

Yesterday, DHS decided not to listen. The Department moved 10 of the families into the former building, with plans to add the remaining 190 – a total of over 400 new residents – to both buildings over the next few months, according to Diamond.

“We’re absolutely furious about it,” one of the buildings’ 71 existing residents told New York Post. “No one was told anything at all.”

Now, Stringer, Brewer and Rosenthal are joining with State Senator Adriano Espaillat, Community Board 7 and Upper West Side residents in calling on DHS again to suspend immediately all efforts to refer clients to the buildings.

“[T]he proposal to house 200 adults, who are currently homeless, in 100 tiny rooms at 316 and 330 West 95 Street on a temporary basis is poor planning, poor policy, and includes little if any transparency,” said Brewer in a statement. “The process should have included a substantive planning discussion with Community Board 7, elected officials, current residents of the two buildings, and responsible neighborhood leaders to find a solution to the need for shelter for homeless individuals.”

Stringer agreed. “New Yorkers understand that all neighborhoods share in the responsibility to provide housing to those in need,” he said in a statement. “But abruptly moving a 400-person shelter into a residential neighborhood in the dead of summer with no community consultation, no contract and no long-term plan only creates bad will and sets back the cause of fighting homelessness.”

“By failing to conduct a dialogue with the community and the elected officials who represent it,” said Rosenthal, “DHS and its former commissioner Robert Hess have disrespected thoroughly this neighborhood.”

UWS Residents Want Their Trees Skirted
As New York enters the lazy days of the end of the summer, Upper West Side residents have not been idle. Recently, Council Member Gale Brewer has received so many calls about tree skirts that she was compelled to take action. Brewer heard from constituents on Columbus Avenue that several trees and lampposts had been summarily stripped of their coverings. According to a letter that Brewer sent to Department of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, demanding answers to the perplexing case, the tree skirts and lamppost collars have been removed from the four corners of West 75th Street and Columbus Avenue, as well as from two corners of West 74th Street and Columbus Avenue. The Upper West Side community is normally quite vigilant about maintaining pleasant and historically correct streetscapes, so it should come as no surprise to the DOT that locals are calling for answers. Brewer politely asked the DOT to return the swiped skirts as well as inform the community why they disappeared in the first place.

Free Summer Concerts Continue
The Lincoln Square Business Improvement District is hosting free outdoor concerts for the lunch crowd every Wednesday in August, from 12-2 p.m., in Richard Tucker Park. On Aug. 15, the Opera Collective will be bringing some classical fare to the park with an Opera in the Square afternoon. The Aug. 22 concert will be “Pop to Beatlemania” with Andy Suzuki & The Method and The Meetles, and the series will wrap up Aug. 29 with The Brotherhood of the Jug Band Blue and the Ukuladies playing early American tunes. The park is on West 66th Street from Broadway to Columbus Avenue. Music lovers are encouraged to bring their lunch and something to sit on to watch the show.

Locals Rally Against Homeless Shelters
The Department of Homeless Services (DHS) is plowing ahead with its plan to house 200 homeless families in single room occupancy (SRO) buildings on the Upper West Side. Despite the strident objections of the community board, City Council Member Gale Brewer, Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal, State Sen. Adriano Espaillat and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, DHS announced earlier this week that they will begin moving homeless residents into the buildings at 316 and 330 W. 95th St.

The buildings are serving as emergency shelters, meaning that DHS doesn’t have to adhere to normal regulations governing where shelters can be placed. The buildings operated as illegal hotels until recently and the owners were fined $600,000 by the city. Instead of returning the SRO units to their originally intended uses, to house low-income residents in small, cheap apartments, the landlords have turned to DHS to offer the buildings as emergency shelters. In return, DHS pays $111.99 per unit per day. Residents and local pols aren’t happy with this choice.

“New Yorkers understand that all neighborhoods share in the responsibility to provide housing to those in need,” said Stringer. “But abruptly moving a 400-person shelter into a residential neighborhood in the dead of summer with no community consultation, no contract and no long-term plan only creates bad will and sets back the cause of fighting homelessness.”

Officials have repeatedly asked DHS to address the neighborhood’s concerns—chiefly that the sudden influx of residents who may have substance abuse or mental health problems will tax the local police and safety resources to the breaking point—but say that they haven’t gotten any satisfactory answers.

“While we all support helping those seeking shelter, it is unjust and unwise to oversaturate one neighborhood through these emergency provisions, especially when it already has its fair share,” said Espaillat. “From the beginning of this process, DHS has failed to communicate with community leaders, enable a public process and notify neighbors.”

One of the biggest criticisms has been of the secrecy of the plan.

“The process should have included a substantive planning discussion with Community Board 7, elected officials, current residents of the two buildings and responsible neighborhood leaders to find a solution to the need for shelter for homeless individuals,” said Brewer.
On Tuesday, residents and politicians came out to protest the move and ask the city to halt the process, but so far there has been no indication that DHS will be heeding those calls.

Even next-door neighbors are at odds about Susan (not her real name), a homeless woman on the Upper East Side known for her constant screaming, coughing and spitting on passersby. While some consider her a threat to the neighborhood, others feel sorry for her and say she can’t control her actions.

As Our Town reported last week, some residents want Susan off the streets or at least treated for her supposed mental illness and cough, which a few locals attribute to tuberculosis or whooping cough.

But there is no easy way to handle this situation. Police can only pick Susan up if they spot her committing a crime, according to Nick Viest, the president of the 19th Precinct Community Council. Spitting is classified as a violation, added Officer  Jepsen of the 19th Precinct, and police can only issue her a summons if they see her spitting on someone. She cannot be forcibly admitted into a mental hospital unless she is clearly a “danger to herself or others,” and no one can force her to stay in a homeless shelter if she chooses not to go, said Mary Lee Gupta, a social worker and program director for the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill of New York City Metro.

Representatives at both the Manhattan Outreach Consortium at the Goddard Riverside Community Center and the Department of Homeless Services said homeless outreach teams have met with Susan.

But Gina Rotundo, who co-owns Alloro Restaurant on East 77th Street between First and Second avenues, doesn’t think Susan is worth this level of concern.

“While her outbursts have been disturbing, they’ve never, ever felt threatening,” Rotundo said. “I don’t think she is terrorizing the Upper East Side at all.”

Some locals believe that Susan maliciously, intentionally spits on those in her path, but Rotundo argues that Susan can’t help her outbursts. She pointed out that she has seen Susan walking over to a garbage can when she has to spit, so that she doesn’t end up spitting on people. When Rotundo was on the train taking her daughter to a class downtown, she realized that Susan tries to avoid confrontation, she said.

“Stupid teenagers were making fun of her and I could see that she was trying to say, ‘Cut it out, cut it out,’” Rotundo said. “She tried to spit out of the train.”

One of Rotundo’s employees, Nick, who declined to give his last name, said that Susan isn’t always wildly hacking and spitting.

“I’ve seen her when she’s not like that—when she’s completely normal,” Nick said. “Everyone has different outlets, and that’s how she expresses when she’s upset.”

Audi Brahimi, a doorman on East 77th Street, who works across the street from Alloro, said he has seen Susan but has never found her disturbing.

“She doesn’t bother me, but I’ve heard other people complain,” Brahimi said. “She didn’t do anything to me. She never comes in front of the building. She just walks down the street—walks down and walks back. That’s it.”

Another doorman on East 77th Street between Second and Third avenues agrees.

“I don’t think she’d ever do anything to anybody,” he said. “I don’t see her doing funny things like jumping on people.”

Next door to Alloro Restaurant, though, at Aaron Emanuel Salon, employees see a completely different side of Susan.

“What she does is she abusively spits on people,” said Alessandro Neira, a hairdresser at the salon. “I was passing by and she spit on me. She can control it and it’s clear that it’s on purpose.”

Unlike Nick, who believes that Susan’s occasional calm moments prove she is not a threat, Neira said he thinks this indicates that Susan intentionally decides when to act up.

Another employee, Elena Burbu, said she is afraid to pass by the woman.

“When she’s on this side of the street, I try to go to the other side,” Burbu said. “I try to avoid her illness.”

Jessica, an employee at Hot and Crusty Bakery on the corner of Lexington and East 77th Street who did not give her last name, said she and her co-worker were walking down the street when Susan spit on them.

“She’s doing it on purpose,” she said. “She’s crazy for sure.”

According to a letter sent to Community Board 7 on July 19, DHS will be contracting with a company called Aguila Inc. to operate transitional housing facilities at 316 and 330 W. 95th St. They will house 200 adult families, which could mean upward of 400 individuals.

When determining where and how to house its homeless residents, the city is pulled by two laws that sometimes place a greater burden on certain communities. New York is a right-to-shelter city, meaning that DHS is responsible for providing a bed for every resident, every night. It also has to adhere to the fair share doctrine that calls for every community district to house an equal number of the city’s homeless population—in other words, the city can’t place a cluster of shelters in one neighborhood in the Bronx and leave other neighborhoods without any shelters.

But when the number of homeless New Yorkers comes close to the number of available beds, an emergency situation is created that allows DHS to site temporary transitional housing in neighborhoods without regard to the fair share rules. It’s this emergency loophole that has Upper West Siders upset.

“All of [the elected officials] have gotten lots of emails from residents in the community who are just fed up with the city placing people on 94th and 95th Street corridors when there’s a homeless emergency,” said Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal. “This is a decade already that they’ve looked at this area as the go-to place. This is a very generous and giving neighborhood, but I think the people in the neighborhood have just reached their limit.”

Rosenthal joined City Council Member Gale Brewer, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and Community Board 7 chair Mark Diller in sending a letter to DHS Commissioner Seth Diamond, strongly urging him to suspend the efforts to move people into the West 95th Street facilities.

Part of the objection from local officials stems from the fact that these buildings were designed as single room occupancy (SRO) units, small, inexpensive rooms with shared bathroom and kitchen facilities that could provide permanent housing for low-income residents. But owners and landlords of SROs have a greater incentive to rent to DHS, which Rosenthal said pays $111 per room per day, adding up to much more than a typical $600 or $700-per-month rent on an SRO unit.

Locals insist that they don’t object to housing the homeless in their community, but that they shouldn’t be burdened with a sudden influx of homeless adults when they already have a high number of shelters.

“The Upper West Side in general, and this corridor of the West 90s in particular, currently provides shelter to the homeless and other vulnerable populations through a variety of facilities. These buildings collectively serve thousands of people,” read part of the letter to Diamond.

“This is not NIMBY,” said Diller in an email. “In fact, there are existing buildings being used to serve vulnerable populations as close as a half-block from the location. Rather, it is about achieving the right kind of balance for the vulnerable population, the other residents of the proposed buildings and the surrounding community.”

DHS did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this article, and Rosenthal said that the agency has not been forthcoming with the community.

Robert Hess, a former DHS commissioner who is now the chairman and CEO of Housing Solutions USA, which will be merging with Aguila and operating the facilities, wrote in a letter to the Community Board that his company “seek[s] to meet [clients’] needs through a comprehensive continuum of care, knowing the lasting, positive change cannot occur unless the complexity of the problems our clients face is acknowledged and addressed.”

Hess would not speak with a reporter for this story, and his company repeatedly refused to answer any questions about the operations planned for 316 and 330 W. 95th St.

Building between Broome and Lafayette Streets around where woman was stabbed by homeless man. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

“Susan,” known for her spitting, coughing and screaming on the Upper East Side, isn’t the first homeless person showing signs of mental illness who has raised public concern in the city.

Rafael Rodriguez, a homeless man, stabbed and killed a woman in the middle of the day on the corner of Lafayette and Broome streets in SoHo, according to a February 1991 article in the West Side Spirit. His crime went unnoticed by police until the next day, when reports surfaced that Rodriguez has menaced other passersby with a knife later that afternoon.

A year later, in February 1992, the West Side Spirit reported that Peter S. (a name created by the paper), a homeless man with a history of mental disorders, was terrorizing Upper West Side residents—in one case pushing a girl in front of a moving truck. In another, he threatened local resident Lisa Lehr as she exited her parked car, saying he was going to kill her. Once she was inside her apartment, he smashed her car with a slab of marble.

He also reportedly menaced people outside of a Pizzeria Uno, naked, threatening to set their children and dogs on fire.

Lehr told the Spirit that she spoke a police officer who said Peter S. was “too psychotic for the mental hospital.” 911 dispatchers, workers at the city’s emergency psychiatric wards and admitters at the veterans’ hospital all knew him—but none wanted to deal with him. No one agreed on whose job it was to handle the man. Police repeatedly picked him up and brought him to Bellevue, though only days later he was discharged.

“It was like a tennis match,” Lehr told the Sprit. “None of them wanted to deal with him.”

When Peter S. was hospitalized, he was docile and reasoned with doctors, telling them that as a citizen and a Vietnam War veteran, he deserved to be free.

The 1991 story explains that some consider the “imminent danger to oneself and others” wording in the New York State Mental Health Law to be vague, favoring the rights of the mentally ill over local residents who are frightened about their behavior.

“We want to take decisions about the medical treatment of people out of the court system and into the hands of doctors, family members and advocates for the mentally ill,” said D.J. Jaffe, the then-spokesperson for the Alliance for the Mentally Ill.

"Susan" has frightened many residents of East 77th Street over the past six months; she spits, screams and coughs on residents that she comes in contact with.

By Amanda Woods

Nikki Henkin stood in front of her apartment on East 77th Street, between Lexington and Third avenues, holding up a flip camera to capture a video of Susan (not her real name), a neighborhood homeless woman who screams wildly, coughs repeatedly and deliberately spits on passersby. Pedestrians in Susan’s path clear sidewalks, subway platforms and cars to avoid her.

Henkin hoped she would be able to show her footage to the police as proof of Susan’s disturbing behavior. But once Susan spotted Henkin, she grew outraged.

“She started to scream at me, ‘It’s against the law to take my picture. You can’t do that. I’m going to call the police,’” Henkin said.
Henkin went inside her apartment’s lobby. Minutes later, Susan darted in and threw a plastic cup filled with a clear liquid at Henkin. “I don’t know what the liquid was—water, bleach, acid,” Henkin said. “Luckily, I’m OK and she left.”

Residents say Susan has made the Upper East Side her stomping ground for about six months and has been a nuisance and a hazard ever since.

“She will burst out screaming and you can hear her 10 floors up,” Henkin said. “She coughs violently, which made me think she has a communicable disease, and then she purposely, intentionally spits on people, spits on children in strollers and spits on people walking dogs.”

One resident who wished to remain anonymous said she and a friend visiting from France had to walk in the street to avoid the spitting woman.

“All that came on to my radar screen is that she had a strange look in her eyes, and at that moment, this woman started hissing and spitting and making almost animal noises,” the resident said. “It was horrifying and scary—like having a rabid animal in your presence.”

Pedro Ramos, a window washer on East 77th Street, said Susan once spit on passengers on the 6 train, prompting a commuter to call the police at the 86th Street station. Eliott Rebollo, an apartment superintendent in the neighborhood, said that six people who live in his building have told him they felt threatened by Susan. And Jimmy Gouvakis, owner of Soup Burg, located on Lexington Avenue between 76th and 77th streets, said Susan once traipsed through his restaurant, causing a scene and disturbing diners.

Susan, a thin, middle-aged woman with dark hair, clad in sweat pants, a brown T-shirt and a black woolen cap, travels with a younger man who may be her son or her nephew, but he usually remains quiet, residents say. Together, the two haul three or four suitcases and bags, which they carry down into the 77th Street subway station to travel elsewhere—but they always return to the Upper East Side.
Henkin and other locals want Susan off the streets, or at least treated for her cough, which some believe may be a sign of tuberculosis or whooping cough, and her supposed mental illness.

But Susan is only an example of a larger issue in New York City. The number of homeless living in New York City shelters has grown to 43,000, according to Patrick Markee, senior policy specialist at the Coalition for the Homeless. Three-quarters of the shelter population are families, of whom only a small number are mentally ill. But out of the 10,000 single adults who live in the city’s shelters, one-third to one-fourth are mentally ill, Markee said.

The number of street homeless in New York City, those who don’t go to shelters, totals 3,262, according to a Department of Homeless Services spokeswoman—and two-thirds of them are mentally ill, according to Markee. Last week’s report of a deranged homeless man stabbing and attempting to rob a young woman on Second Avenue near 86th Street has intensified local concerns about the homeless and mentally ill and whether they could be dangerous.

Although Susan has not committed a violent crime, some Upper East Siders fear that her behavior could escalate, and they’re hoping the police will take action before then. After the liquid-throwing incident, Henkin wanted to press charges but police told her that because the incident was only a violation and officers weren’t present when it happened, no charges could be lodged.

Police are monitoring Susan, according to Nick Viest, president of the 19th Precinct’s Community Council. The NYPD’s policy for this and similar issues is to send the precinct’s Conditions Unit, which handles quality-of-life and minor street concerns, to the area.

“What they do is they monitor it—they send police over to observe,” Viest said. “This one in particular is on the radar screen. They can’t make an arrest if they don’t observe the person doing something illegal. They try to stay on top of it and watch it.”

Viest explained that for police to act, the woman’s behavior would have to be more severe. “If she assaults someone or attacks someone, that’s a crime and police can act on it,” Viest said. “It’s simply that she appears menacing and she’s disturbing to a lot of people, so it seems like that’s the difficulty here.”

Spencer Korwin, an Upper East Sider, doesn’t believe police have reason to act just yet. “I don’t know if anything she does is illegal,” Korwin said. “She’s not doing anything wrong, just causing a disturbance.”

A source familiar with mental health issues said that if the police believe Susan is a danger, they can bring her to a hospital to be checked in. The hospital can keep her for 72 hours, but if the staff doesn’t find her dangerous, they can allow her to leave.

The problem is that there is no easy or immediate way to address Susan’s problems, according to Mary Lee Gupta, a social worker and the program director for the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill of New York City Metro. The criteria for psychiatric institution admission are stringent, and as Gupta sees it, Susan doesn’t fit the bill.

”If a person is not a danger to themself or others, you can’t have the police come and take her to a psychiatric hospital,” Gupta said. “She wouldn’t be admitted. Clearly, she has symptoms, but unfortunately, the bar is high for admission.”

If Susan threatened to hurt someone, carried a weapon or had a plan to commit suicide, she could be admitted, but her case isn’t nearly that severe, Gupta added.

“There are literally several thousand people on the streets of New York, and it’s simply not possible to scoop people up and mandate treatment,” said Ira Mandelker, executive director of the Neighborhood Coalition for Shelter, located on the Upper East Side.

Susan could voluntarily enter a hospital if she “has a mental illness for which care and treatment in a mental hospital is appropriate,” according to New York State Mental Hygiene Law, outlined by the State Office of Mental Health. But questions often arise about when a person should be considered dangerous enough to his or herself and others to be involuntarily entered into a mental health facility, making it difficult to find a safe and fair balance between protecting the rights of the mentally ill to refuse treatment and the rights of the people who feel threatened by them.

A Department of Homeless Services spokeswoman noted that a client can only be taken to a mental health facility involuntarily if he or she reaches “the highest threshold of danger.” In this case, Section 9.58 of the Mental Hygiene Law, which states that people who appear to have a mental illness and present a danger to themselves or others can be involuntary taken to a psychiatric emergency room to meet with medical doctors, licensed psychologists, registered nurses or certified social workers, would be enacted.

Of the 85,820 people in the five boroughs who are mental hospital patients, only 2 percent were homeless before admission, according to the Patient Characteristics Survey, a one-week survey conducted by the Office of Mental Health of all mental health programs statewide. In Manhattan, where 19,190 people are enrolled in mental hospitals, 5 percent were homeless.

Coupled with the hurdles to entering a state mental institution, the movement in state hospitals toward deinstitutionalization that began in the 1960s makes mental hospitals an even more unlikely place for the mentally ill homeless, according to a psychiatrist who lives on the Upper East Side and worked in the state mental health system for many years.

“It became a mania with state people to discharge patients wildly to reduce censuses because it was economical for state budgets,” the psychiatrist said.

The chances of Susan entering a homeless shelter are also unlikely. Homeless outreach teams can confer with her and ask if she would be willing to go into a shelter for evaluation, but if she is not willing, it can’t happen, Gupta said.

Kristen Edwards, director of the Manhattan Outreach Consortium at the Goddard Riverside Community Center, said the center’s outreach teams have gone out to see Susan, but she would not elaborate on specifics.

The Homeless Services spokeswoman said Susan appears to be part of the street homeless population rather than a shelter client. Homeless Services cannot force clients to enter a shelter, the spokeswoman said, but they can encourage them to seek help at a Safe Haven program, which is geared toward street clients and has semiprivate rooms and more relaxed curfews. She said an outreach team had met with Susan and considered her “civil and engaged with them.” They thought she didn’t pose an immediate danger.

But Mandelker said this behavior is to be expected.

“People, when they’re meeting with outreach workers and psychiatric outreach workers on the street—they can bring it together pretty well and not seem threatening when they’re in the presence of outreach workers,” he said.

Residents concerned about Susan or other neighborhood homeless people can respond in a few ways. Residents concerned Susan’s cough may be a sign of tuberculosis can contact the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene; the law allows people to be picked up for public health safety concerns, according to a source who wished to remain anonymous.

The Manhattan Outreach Consortium seriously considers community concerns, Edwards said, and residents can call 311 and request a homeless outreach team to come to a specific location. Team representatives will arrive immediately, Edwards added, though the person of concern must be at that location when the teams get there. The teams conduct basic psychosocial assessments of each case, determine if they need to be seen by a psychologist and work to connect them to transitional and permanent housing.

But community concerns alone won’t be enough to get Susan help, Gupta said. Locals can begin by talking to Susan and encouraging her to seek help, she added.
“I think that people can try to engage her in conversation and try to talk with her about whether she would be willing to go into a shelter,” Gupta said. “They can try to get a sense of what’s going on with her. If she says things of a level of concern, it would be helpful for them to call for help from the police.”

Henkin, though, is still looking for concrete answers.

”I understand the issues, but I also understand that I have to walk on the sidewalk and not be assaulted by somebody,” she said. “I don’t want anyone spitting on me and coughing. I think people in this community are entitled to an answer.”

The MTA cannot usually be counted on to raise deep philosophical and moral questions. But it happened last month during a ride on the 1 train.

The voice came through loud and clear. You know the voice—it’s the one that has replaced an actual person to provide announcements on the train. “We ask you not to give,” the voice told passengers, who, being New Yorkers, were not listening anyway. “Please help us maintain an orderly subway.”

The message is simple enough, but I question whether the MTA really needs to take a stand on whether its passengers should give cash handouts to panhandlers. Especially given that the MTA itself is so good at taking our money—without asking.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not walking around with a lot of cash. And I tend not to part with it. I’m generally in the Don’t Give camp on the panhandling question, but that’s mostly because I think it’s unwise to flash money around belowground. Or aboveground. Or at a family dinner.

I wonder, though, if there are not costs to not giving. When I do hand over a little cash, I usually feel better than when I do not.

Yes, I’ve heard all the arguments against giving, mostly when they were coming out of my mouth. Like how the money is just going to be spent on booze or drugs; the money would better be spent in a donation to a social service agency; the money is not as important as stopping and speaking to the person in need and then going and buying them a sandwich or even a bottle of water.

The last piece of advice seems most valuable to me. I was moved a few months ago when I saw someone on West 78th Street, a customer of La Caridad, heading out the door to deliver a special order to a homeless man on the street. Realizing I cannot remember the last time I did something like that makes me feel ashamed. So does the act of not giving, of passing someone in need—even just a human being who is asking for something, whether he or she is really in need.

For about a decade I have lived here full-time. Somehow, this question of giving or not giving never really goes away. Neither does the larger subset of questions on the best ways to give. These issues resonate even more after surviving—sorta—the Great Recession. After a lost job and unemployment checks a while back, I have a lot less trouble imagining myself as the person doing the asking.

Still, I hesitate to give, partly because by not giving, I get to opt out of what feels like a bad reality show. Responding to pleas at some times and not at others may seem like a reasonable response, but it winds up requiring a constant series of judgments. I don’t like the idea of trying to size up whether someone is telling the truth, or the hugeness of his or her horrible circumstance, after listening to a brief diatribe. I feel like I’m the panelist on a bad game show, one called Are Your Troubles Bad Enough For Me to Care? Instead, I choose to try to ignore the plea and finish a Gail Collins column.

I guess I’m fairly good at shutting myself off into my own little world. Sometimes I’m proud of that; other times I think it’s a necessity in the bustling big city.

But when the MTA voice told me not to give and I realized that I’ve been mostly following that advice, it gave me a start. When the MTA and I are on the same page, something’s gone wrong.

Christopher Moore is a writer living in Manhattan. He can be reached by email at ccmnj@aol.com and is also on Twitter (@cmoorenyc).