Because the Mamdani administration works towards what it says is a extra equitable distribution of homeless shelters all through the town, advocates in neighborhoods with a number of services are going to court docket to cease the town from including extra to their plate.
Fourteen residents of Sundown Park and Greenwood Heights in Brooklyn filed lawsuits just lately, claiming the approval of a 200-bed single males’s homeless shelter there was not based mostly on a correct “Truthful Share” evaluation and environmental overview.
The power, HELP Quarterstone, might be situated at 225 twenty fifth St. close to Fourth Avenue and is about to open “presumably in October,” in keeping with HELP USA builders at a latest public assembly.
The brand new facility joins a dense grouping of shelters already working within the space, with 5 shelter services already inside half a mile of the proposed website, together with a shelter for households with kids, three industrial lodges used to shelter single adults and a industrial resort used to shelter households with kids.
“We’re being accused as NIMBYs — it’s completely unsuitable, in my view,” mentioned Hakan Topal, an organizer with Greenwood Heights Affiliation, which has spearheaded the authorized effort. Topal and the opposite plaintiffs used synthetic intelligence to jot down their preliminary authorized complaints as a result of they’re representing themselves professional se, or with out an lawyer.
“We deeply care about these populations, however we can not have the burden on a regular basis. You can’t put six, seven, eight shelters inside a 5, six-block radius,” he mentioned.
With the addition of HELP Quarterstone, Sundown Park as an entire can be house to at the least 11 shelters, in keeping with the lawsuit. The proposed shelter, situated close to a daycare and the twenty fifth Avenue R subway station, has prompted public security considerations from native enterprise homeowners.
The lawsuits are the most recent in a long-running problem for Metropolis Corridor and the Division of Homeless Companies: Meet the pressing have to get New Yorkers with out properties into beds every night time, whereas attempting to ensure the entire metropolis’s neighborhoods host a few of them.
The Push For Change
Meaning making certain “that each neighborhood is doing its justifiable share and has sufficient security internet sources to help their neighbors in want,” mentioned Nicholas Jacobelli, deputy press secretary on the Division of Social Companies, in an announcement to The Metropolis Reporter.
“We’re proud to report that we now have recognized a shelter location in each neighborhood district, and as these new websites come on-line, we might be higher positioned to vary our footprint and section out using websites in oversaturated districts that this administration has inherited,” Jacobelli mentioned.
A kind of new shelters is in Bensonhurst, the place in March the town pushed forward with opening a facility — the primary within the district — regardless of fierce opposition from residents, together with Councilmember Susan Zhuang, who allegedly bit an NYPD officer at a protest of the ability.
DHS advised The Metropolis Reporter has notified residents of the final two Council districts with out shelters that services are coming. They’re District 29 in Queens, together with Forest Hills, Rego Park, and Kew Gardens, and District 51 on Staten Island’s South Shore.
In the meantime, the homeless disaster continues — and the town faces huge stress to satisfy its “proper to shelter” mandate, which requires the town to ensure emergency housing to homeless people.
The variety of extraordinarily low-income households has climbed, rising by over 91,000 over the course of the Adams administration, in keeping with the Coalition for the Homeless’s 2026 State of the Homeless report. Eviction filings have jumped from a pandemic low of 42,110 in 2021 to 114,832 in 2025, in keeping with the report.
Final 12 months, 194,531 folks cycled via the shelter system — the best charge in historical past, in keeping with the report.
“Town, proper now, doesn’t have practically sufficient shelter beds to get in compliance with the legislation,” mentioned David Giffen, govt director of the Coalition for the Homeless, talking of the “proper to shelter” mandate.
The consequence? Extra shelters will open in locations like Greenwood Heights and Sundown Park, the place residents really feel critically overburdened — with out a authorized definition of what that appears like.
The lawsuit, with 14 separate complaints, together with letters of help from Councilmember Alexa Aviles and U.S. Rep. Dan Goldman, claims that the town violates its Truthful Share mandate and that the Truthful Share evaluation used within the shelter’s approval course of depends on knowledge greater than a decade previous.
The “Truthful Share” constitution, adopted in 1989, mandated the town make a concerted effort to make sure that communities are each getting their justifiable share of facilities like parks and libraries, and doing their justifiable share to confront and assist resolve citywide issues like homelessness. The constitution, nevertheless, doesn’t outline what oversaturation may imply or present specs on the variety of shelter services allowed in a neighborhood.
Stories have proven {that a} small variety of neighborhoods are taking up many extra beds than others. A 2023 citywide audit and geospatial evaluation by former Comptroller Brad Lander discovered that three facility varieties — childcare, hearth stations, and police precincts — had been usually distributed evenly, however that parks, waste switch websites, social providers, and homeless shelters weren’t.
“Homeless shelters are closely concentrated, with some communities taking up 100 instances extra shelter beds than others, and 4 neighborhood districts having no shelters in any respect,” mentioned the report.
Usually, areas are dictated by builders, who submit proposals to the town based mostly on property worth and potential revenue, in keeping with Stewart Wurtzel, an lawyer who has represented many New Yorkers who’ve sued over “justifiable share” circumstances up to now.
Chris Banks, now a Council member representing Brownsville and East New York, as soon as led the Better East New York Coalition throughout an analogous “justifiable share” case.
Banks needed to increase the required neighborhood board notification interval for brand spanking new shelter services from 30 days to 120 days, and topic shelter approval to the town’s core overview course of that comes with public suggestions.
A 2017 push to reform Truthful Share by updating its standards died on the vine and confronted pushback from homeless advocates who argued they’d encode obstacles to construct shelters into legislation, with out mechanisms to make it simpler to website areas elsewhere.
For now, the residents in Greenwood Heights hope their lawsuit will drive the town to rethink. However their likelihood is low.
“I feel they finally will lose the case as a result of … housing is a human proper,” mentioned Banks. “Most judges will aspect with opening up a shelter to offer housing for people who find themselves in want, and they might ignore the pursuits of the neighborhood, who say, ‘We simply need notification.’”
Within the de Blasio years, many such lawsuits hit the town over new shelters. However none efficiently stopped a shelter from opening.
“In each occasion, we prevail,” Social Companies Commissioner Steve Banks mentioned in 2019. “However litigation does delay.” Banks is now company counsel, the town’s high lawyer.
“On the finish of the day, the town, the mayor’s workplace, must observe their very own guidelines, proper?” mentioned Topal. “That’s our downside with them.”
Theresa Watkinson, the chief working officer at Baked in Brooklyn, a bakery situated down the block from the proposed shelter website, says she has feared for the security of her 200 staff and her enterprise after a break-in just a few years in the past, the sexual assault of a former worker final 12 months on her approach to the twenty fifth subway station, and repeated cases of tip theft. It’s unclear whether or not the incidents had been associated to close by shelters.
“The query is that if we need to transfer out of state now,” Watkinson mentioned in an interview. “We’re Baked in Brooklyn. It’s kind of like Brooklyn is forcing us out. Town is forcing us out.”
Others, like 43-year-old John Santore, a resident of Sundown Park since 2015, imagine compliance with Truthful Share is a “reputable” request, however he thinks the narrative is off-kilter.
“I simply don’t assume we should always body this completely in a destructive means, like a shelter is inherently dangerous,” Santore mentioned. “When you’re in a shelter, you’re not essentially a hazard. People who find themselves in shelters have jobs, for instance.”
“No one did any background examine [when I moved here]. No one knew something about me,” he continued. “I simply moved onto the block, so we should always lengthen that very same courtesy to people who find themselves in a shelter.”
