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City Has Been Housing Homeless Families in Flatiron Hotel Since August: DHS

By Noah Hurowitz | October 25, 2016 8:21am
 The city has been housing homeless families at the MAve Hotel since August, according to a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeless Services.
The city has been housing homeless families at the MAve Hotel since August, according to a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeless Services.
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DNAinfo/Noah Hurowitz

MIDTOWN — The city has quietly been housing homeless families in a boutique hotel just above Flatiron for more than a month, according to a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeless Services.

The MAve Hotel, at 62 Madison Ave., near East 28th Street, has been housing homeless men and women with children since August, according to officials.

“We have been renting rooms at this location to help meet our legal and moral obligation to provide shelter to homeless families with children who would otherwise be turned out onto the street,” DHS spokeswoman Lauren Gray said.

There is 24-hour security provided at the hotel, Gray said.

It's not immediately clear if the hotel is still being used by paying guests in addition to the homeless residents. Gray did not respond to questions regarding how many rooms were being rented by DHS.

A representative of the owner of the MAve Hotel did not respond to a request for comment, and DHS would not provide further details.

The news comes on the heels of a controversial plan by the city to repurpose a shuttered hotel nearby at 25 W. 24th St. into a 47-bed emergency shelter for homeless adults just coming off the streets.

It has been nearly two months since angry Chelsea residents shut down a Community Board 5 meeting where the shelter was due to be discussed, and despite promises of a new meeting being held in two weeks, no meeting has yet been scheduled.

But Gray revealed Monday that the plan is no longer in motion, as the landlord of that building has decided to rent to another tenant.

Borough President Gale Brewer is set to hold a broader forum on homeless services in the area, which will be held Tuesday at the American Sign Language and English Preparatory School, at 225 E. 23rd St.

The meeting, which will include representatives of DHS, the Human Resources Administration, Breaking Ground and the advocacy group Picture the Homeless, will be a more general discussion of potential solutions to the city’s homeless crisis, rather than a direct discussion of the shelter planned for West 24th Street.

Residents of Gramercy, Kips Bay, Flatiron, and Chelsea have complained this year that their swath of Manhattan has more homeless shelters than it can handle, an “oversaturation” that some vocal neighbors say violates the “Fair Share criteria” of the City Charter.

Kips Bay and Chelsea already have two of the largest shelters in the city: the 850-bed Bellevue Men’s Shelter at First Avenue and 30th Street and the Bowery Residents Committee Shelter on West 25th Street between Sixth and Seventh avenues with hundreds more beds.

Some neighbors worry that the addition of the 47-bed shelter at 25 W. 24th Street and the renting out of rooms at MAve will only make matters worse.

“Every time we go to a community meeting we hear about a new shelter being planned,” said Lauren Hufnal, who lives near East 30th Street and Third Avenue. “Other parts of the city need to help with the burden.”

Mayor Bill de Blasio has pledged to phase out the use of hotels as auxiliary homeless shelters, but the practice persists, with rooms rented to homeless families in recent months in RockawayWoodside and elsewhere.