NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — The city is getting ready to move more than 200 homeless men out of a hotel on the Upper West Side down to another hotel in the Financial District, where another battle appears to be brewing.
It became a test of values on the Upper West Side: will you welcome the homeless or call them out? As the residents of the Lucerne Hotel get set to move to the old Radisson on William Street this month, that test is now shifting to the Financial District.
Both sides agree on one thing, the homeless men in the Lucerne Hotel on the Upper West Side shouldn't have to move again.
"It would just retraumatize them to have to go through that process of packing up everything, learning the new neighborhood," said Tiffany Winbush of the group Friends of FiDi.
If the move down to the Financial District does happen, as has been ordered by the de Blasio administration, Winbush said the men should be welcomed.
"We just want to be a voice of empathy," she said. "We're currently working on welcome kits: hats, gloves, reusable water bottles."
Winbush said she thinks back to the reason why the city started putting homeless men in hotels in the first place: to allow for more socially distancing in shelters amid the coronavirus pandemic.
"This is something that's going to be helpful to our wider city," she said.
But another group, Downtown New Yorkers Inc., is suing to stop the move.
"The location is within 300 feet of four schools and within blocks of 12 schools," said Joanna, a spokesperson for the group who declined to give her last name. "We don't have the resources that the Upper West Side has to be able to really serve them."
She said there aren't enough resources in the area to support the men.
"The suit asserts that the city is exploiting the current humanitarian crisis to cover up its own mismanagement," she told WCBS 880's Steve Burns.
The mayor has promised to end the use of hotels to house the homeless, but his administration is considering making the Radisson a permanent shelter.