GREENPOINT — The long-anticipated 200-bed homeless shelter at 400 McGuinness Blvd. is slated to open this September, according to Craigslist ads to hire for the facility.
The Bowery Residents' Committee, opening the residence with the city's Department of Homeless Services, has posted ads on Craigslist for career days this summer to hire for the shelter, as the Greenpoint Gazette first reported.
"This is a place where people have a chance to change their lives," said Muzzy Rosenblatt, BRC's executive director of the facility.
"This is an assessment center, so people who are just entering the shelter system are being evaluated for the first time and being linked to their services," he said, predicting that the shelter would hire 75 to 100 new staff.
In the past the shelter has been a source of controversy, with neighbors last month forming a corporation to fight the shelter's opening.
"We have formed a corporation...in order to organize and fight against the 200-bed men's homeless shelter, which threatens to ruin our current lifestyle and the safety and quality of the neighborhood," the coalition wrote in a donation request letter.
But Rosenblatt said the city had been "extremely responsive" to concerns and said the shelter filled an undeniable service gap.
"I appreciate that shelters are not what most people would want to have per se in their community," he said, "but we have a need, a tragedy of homelessness that the city of New York responds to far better than other cities in our country."
The Department of Homeless Services did not respond to immediate requests for comment.
