A homeless shelter plan by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is set to begin next to some of Manhattan’s most expensive real estate properties after a legal battle to prevent its construction was shot down in court.
A New York state appeals court dismissed the complaints Thursday raised by a coalition of residents and businesses from the Manhattan neighborhood near Central Park, which is nicknamed Billionaires’ Row for its expensive nearby high rises and properties.
Billionaires’ Row is not actually one street nor is it a defined area, although real estate agents unofficially define it as an area south of Central Park, between 57th Street and 59th Street from north to south and extending from Eighth Avenue to Second Avenue.
The West 58th Street Coalition sued in 2018 to stop a city proposal to develop a men’s shelter at the now-closed Park Savoy Hotel near some of the most expensive properties in the nation, according to Bloomberg.
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The suit was in response to de Blasio’s proposed initiative in 2017 called Turning the Tide, which aimed to establish 90 homeless shelters throughout the city. The coalition argued the plan could present a safety concern for residents in the area, saying, “It has been well documented in published reports that areas that border on homeless shelters for men have many problems with loitering, drug use, and other criminal activities.”
“This plan was never shared with anyone in our neighborhood, and our input not solicited,” the coalition wrote on a Change.org petition. “While we understand the need to shelter the city’s homeless, we believe that the Mayor’s Turning the Tide plan is deeply flawed.”
The coalition described de Blasio’s plan as “an expensive band-aid, that doesn’t come close to addressing the shortage of affordable housing.”
The Albany court could not “second guess” a previous determination by an “authorized agency” that found the city’s planning for the shelter could safely proceed, it ruled Thursday. A judge dismissed the coalition’s lawsuit in 2019, but an appeals court in Manhattan reinstated the suit.
The decision paves the way “for opening a resource-rich shelter that New Yorkers desperately need,” the city’s Law Department said in a statement to Bloomberg.
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The Washington Examiner contacted New York City’s Law Department and the West 58th Street Coalition but did not immediately receive a response.
