Ozone shelter

Adi Talwar

The city faced stiff opposition from residents of Ozone Park when it first announced it’s plans for placing a homeless shelter for men at this location.

 

Mayor de Blasio’s plan to build 90 new homeless shelters around the city has encountered fierce opposition in several neighborhoods. As City Limits reported Monday, opponents in different communities cite various reasons for resisting new shelters. Some cite public safety fears, concerns about strain on local services, worries about the safety or suitability of the proposed site for shelter residents, or fears about the impact a shelter might have on other plans for the neighborhood.

A constant theme in the conversation is “fair share” — i.e., whether neighborhoods are being asked to shoulder more of the burden than is fair. Fair share is a formal part of the city charter, but it’s also an idea. And it’s a more complex idea that it sounds. Does “fair share” refer only to a particular type of infrastructure, or to all types: If one community has three jails and another has one jail and four waste transfer stations, who is bearing the heavier share? Is it fair to communities to insist that they absorb more of the shelter system simply because their residents face harsher economic realities and are more likely to be homeless? And who deserves fairness more: shelter neighbors worried about quality of life or homeless people facing a housing crisis?

And of course, however one defines it, the question of fairness has to be dealt with amid the practicalities of finding space for new shelter beds and doing so with some urgency.

The questions are complex but some of the numbers below, courtesy of the Department of Homeless Services as of July 31, are not: There are nine districts in the city that do not host a single shelter bed.

Community district Neighborhoods Individuals in the shelter system who come from the district Individuals sheltered in the district Share of total shelter population that comes from the district Share of citywide total shelter population hosted in the district
Bronx 1 Mott Haven / Melrose 2,012 1,910 4.5% 3.3%
Bronx 2 Hunts Point / Longwood 1,058 1,228 2.4% 2.1%
Bronx 3 Morrisania / Crotona 1,960 2,557 4.4% 4.4%
Bronx 4 Highbridge / Concourse 2,297 3,733 5.1% 6.4%
Bronx 5 Fordham / University Heights 2,081 2,731 4.6% 4.7%
Bronx 6 Belmont / East Tremont 1,621 2,869 3.6% 4.9%
Bronx 7 Kingsbridge Heights / Bedford 1,330 1,275 3.0% 2.2%
Bronx 8 Riverdale / Fieldston 328 248 0.7% 0.4%
Bronx 9 Parkchester / Soundview 1,895 826 4.2% 1.4%
Bronx 10 Throgs Neck / Co-op City 508 584 1.1% 1.0%
Bronx 11 Morris Park / Bronxdale 817 0 1.8% 0.0%
Bronx 12 Williamsbridge / Baychester 1,870 388 4.2% 0.7%
Brooklyn 1 Greenpoint / Williamsburg 447 890 1.0% 1.5%
Brooklyn 2 Fort Green / Brooklyn Heights 415 635 0.9% 1.1%
Brooklyn 3 Bedford Stuyvesant 1,752 1,671 3.9% 2.9%
Brooklyn 4 Bushwick 696 1,485 1.6% 2.5%
Brooklyn 5 East New York / Starrett City 2,631 2,226 5.9% 3.8%
Brooklyn 6 Park Slope / Carroll Gardens 274 526 0.6% 0.9%
Brooklyn 7 Sunset Park 255 802 0.6% 1.4%
Brooklyn 8 Crown Heights / Prospect Heights 819 1,069 1.8% 1.8%
Brooklyn 9 S. Crown Heights / Lefferts Gardens 616 778 1.4% 1.3%
Brooklyn 10 Bay Ridge / Dyker Heights 114 0 0.3% 0.0%
Brooklyn 11 Bensonhurst 207 0 0.5% 0.0%
Brooklyn 12 Borough Park 130 137 0.3% 0.2%
Brooklyn 13 Coney Island 407 130 0.9% 0.2%
Brooklyn 14 Flatbush / Midwood 584 100 1.3% 0.2%
Brooklyn 15 Sheepshead Bay 161 212 0.4% 0.4%
Brooklyn 16 Brownsville 1,557 3,671 3.5% 6.3%
Brooklyn 17 East Flatbush 1,306 1,018 2.9% 1.7%
Brooklyn 18 Flatlands / Canarsie 770 1,214 1.7% 2.1%
Manhattan 1 Financial District 467 140 1.0% 0.2%
Manhattan 2 Greenwich Village / Soho 43 0 0.1% 0.0%
Manhattan 3 Lower East Side / Chinatown 579 1,666 1.3% 2.9%
Manhattan 4 Clinton / Chelsea 317 1,121 0.7% 1.9%
Manhattan 5 Midtown 127 2,524 0.3% 4.3%
Manhattan 6 Stuyvesant Town / Turtle Bay 125 851 0.3% 1.5%
Manhattan 7 Upper West Side 305 1,107 0.7% 1.9%
Manhattan 8 Upper East Side 130 80 0.3% 0.1%
Manhattan 9 Morningside Heights / Hamilton 674 862 1.5% 1.5%
Manhattan 10 Central Harlem 1,418 1,821 3.2% 3.1%
Manhattan 11 East Harlem 1,444 2,275 3.2% 3.9%
Manhattan 12 Washington Heights / Inwood 709 402 1.6% 0.7%
Queens 1 Astoria 722 784 1.6% 1.3%
Queens 2 Woodside / Sunnyside 378 1,069 0.8% 1.8%
Queens 3 Jackson Heights 275 954 0.6% 1.6%
Queens 4 Elmhurst / Corona 211 638 0.5% 1.1%
Queens 5 Ridgewood / Maspeth 242 0 0.5% 0.0%
Queens 6 Rego Park / Forest Hills 55 0 0.1% 0.0%
Queens 7 Flushing / Whitestone 223 230 0.5% 0.4%
Queens 8 Hillcrest / Fresh Meadows 302 311 0.7% 0.5%
Queens 9 Kew Gardens / Woodhaven 309 103 0.7% 0.2%
Queens 10 S. Ozone Park / Howard Beach 273 968 0.6% 1.7%
Queens 11 Bayside / Little Neck 29 0 0.1% 0.0%
Queens 12 Jamaica / Hollis 1,697 3,177 3.8% 5.4%
Queens 13 Queens Village 623 1,632 1.4% 2.8%
Queens 14 Rockaway / Broad Channel 1,070 625 2.4% 1.1%
Staten Island 1 St. George / Stapleton 947 149 2.1% 0.3%
Staten Island 2 South Beach / Willowbrook 85 0 0.2% 0.0%
Staten Island 3 Tottenville / Great Kills 58 0 0.1% 0.0%
TOTAL 44,755 58,402

It’s worth noting that not every homeless person can be traced to a home community board. Prior addresses for 9,600 shelter residents can be linked to a borough but not a community district, so those people are not accounted for in the first column. Neither are 3,600 people who did not have a previous New York City address and 443 for whom no previous address information exists.

Looking at borough totals, the Bronx and Staten Island host less than their share of the homeless population, Queens and Manhattan host slightly more and Brooklyn is roughly proportionate.

Borough Individuals sheltered in the borough Individuals in the shelter system who come from the borough
Bronx 31.42% 38.34%
Brooklyn 28.36% 28.63%
Manhattan 22.00% 16.67%
Queens 17.96% 15.33%
Staten Island 0.26% 2.37%