22 THE QUEENS COURIER • OCTOBER 5, 2017 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT WWW.QNS.COM
MORE HOMELESS HOTELS
City fi nds rooms for undomiciled at Sunnyside & Kew Gardens inns
BY ANGELA MATUA AND
ROBERT POZARYCKI
editorial@qns.com / @QNS
Within three days last week, the city’s
Department of Homeless Services (DHS)
rented rooms at two hotels in Sunnyside
and Kew Gardens, again raising the ire
of local offi cials who said they only knew
about it aft er the homeless started arriving
at both locations.
Th e city began housing families at the
Best Western at 38-05 Hunters Point Ave.
on Sept. 26, the same day elected offi cials
and the community board were notifi ed.
All 82 rooms were rented out though
only 64 are currently occupied, according
to a DHS spokesperson. Th ey anticipate
that all of the hotel’s rooms will eventually
be used.
Th en, on Sept. 30, the DHS moved
homeless men into 19 of the 84 rooms at
the Comfort Inn located at 123-28 82nd
Ave., near Queens Boulevard. Th e agency
has reserved a total of 42 rooms at the
hotel, and it anticipates using the remaining
reserved rooms in the near future.
Councilwoman Karen Koslowitz told
the Queens Chronicle that the agency
only notifi ed her of its intentions on
Friday, Sept. 29, just before the start of
Yom Kippur. Th e DHS source indicated
that the Comfort Inn is being used on
an emergency basis under a court order
to provide shelter at all times, and therefore
is not obligated to provide notice well
ahead of time.
Isaac McGinn, a DHS spokesperson,
said that both hotels are being used in
a temporary capacity. According to the
agency, there are currently three hotels
providing housing to about 250 families
in Community Board 2, which covers
Long Island City, Maspeth, Sunnyside
and Woodside.
Th e Kew Gardens Comfort Inn is the
only facility serving more than 300 homeless
individuals within the confi nes of
Community Board 9, which includes Kew
Gardens, Ozone Park, Richmond Hill and
Woodhaven.
McGinn further added that the city
plans to stop using the hotels in Queens
to house the homeless in the months
to come as it enacts the “Turning the
Tide” homelessness program that the de
Blasio administration announced earlier
this year.
“Comprehensive closure of all remaining
commercial hotel facilities will follow
cluster closures closely,” McGinn said. “In
the interim, while we are phasing out cluster
units as fi rst priority and increasing
high-quality borough-based shelter capacity
citywide, we are using commercial hotels
like this location as a bridge to provide
shelter to homeless New Yorkers, including
families with children, who would otherwise
be turned out into the street.”
Some 60,000 people sleep in temporary
or permanent shelters, or on the streets,
every evening in New York City. In recent
years, the city has turned to hotels across
Queens to house homeless men, women
and children, incurring the wrath of local
residents who either don’t want shelters
in their backyard or believe the city
ought to do more to help the homeless
than house them in hotel rooms at taxpayers’
expense.
Under the “Turning the Tide” plan that
Mayor Bill de Blasio announced earlier
this year, the city will eventually move
the homeless out of hotels and into a network
of 90 facilities to be developed citywide.
Th e city announced in August that
it would phase out using one hotel — a
Holiday Inn Express in Corona — as a
temporary homeless shelter in 2019. It
previously stopped housing the homeless
at two Bellerose hotels following community
protests.
Photo courtesy of booking.com
All 82 rooms at a Best Western hotel in Sunnyside are being rented out to house homeless families.