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MAP: See Where the City Has Been Setting Up New Homeless Shelters in Queens

By Ewa Kern-Jedrychowska | February 10, 2015 7:35am
 The Pan Am hotel is one of several new shelters in Queens. It sparked controversy when community members said it opened without notice.
The Pan Am hotel is one of several new shelters in Queens. It sparked controversy when community members said it opened without notice.
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DNAinfo/Katie Honan

QUEENS — The city has been increasingly using hotels to house homeless New Yorkers, turning several Queens lodgings into shelters in recent months — a move that has angered local residents and community leaders.

But city officials said they have little choice as they struggle to meet the needs of the skyrocketing homeless population, which has reached nearly 59,000 people, according to recent data.

There are 255 homeless shelters in the city, with Manhattan, Brooklyn and The Bronx having more than 70 each, according to statistics provided by the DHS.

Queens has 22 of them and last year, at least two hotels and a rehab center there were transformed into permanent shelters.

Here are some of the recently opened shelters and hotels used to house homeless people in Queens: 

In Jamaica, which is home to 10 of the shelters in Queens, the city has also started renting rooms in at least two hotels — the Radisson Hotel on 140th Street and the former Quality Inn hotel on 94th Avenue, two blocks away from the JFK AirTrain station — to house homeless people.

“DHS has always used temporary spaces for families as they await eligibility determinations to come into shelter," the agency said in a recent email. "This is a short-term measure and ensures that no family is without shelter as the temperatures drop.”

A number of elected officials and community leaders fear that the arrangement would become permanent and were upset that the city has been secretive about the process.

Yvonne Reddick, district manager for Community Board 12, which covers Jamaica, Hollis and St. Albans, said she was not informed that the city was renting rooms for homeless people in the neighborhood.

“Give me that respect as district manager and let us know,” she said. “We have nothing against homelessness — any of us could be homeless before the end of the day.

"But you just don’t saturate one community, one district.” 

In December, CB12 passed a resolution asking the city not to open more homeless shelters in the area.

Last year, the city also turned two Elmhurst hotels into permanent homeless facilities, although initially they opened as emergency homeless shelters.

In June, the Pan Am Hotel on Queens Boulevard, which was slated to reopen as an upscale hostel, was quietly turned into a shelter for 180 families instead, infuriating local residents who held numerous rallies in front of the shelter.

Only several weeks later, the city turned Westway Motor Inn on Astoria Boulevard and the former Daytop Village drug rehabilitation center on Beach 65th Street in Rockaway into a shelter as well.

Samaritan Village, which operates the shelter at the former Pan Am hotel, also plans to open a 125-family shelter in Glendale. Residents sued the city over that plan last October.

DHS said that the number of people living in the city's shelter system has risen dramatically in recent months, reaching nearly 59,000 residents at the end of January. That's about 4,000 more than in August last year, and 20,000 more than five years ago.

If was not immediately clear if other hotels in Queens are also used to house homeless people.

The DHS declined to release specific locations of the remaining homeless shelters in Queens citing residents' right to privacy and safety concerns.