'Our community is terrified, angry and frightened' Upper West Side residents fury as homeless junkies and sex offenders are moved into three luxury hotels and turn the area into a spectacle of public urination, cat-calling and brazen drug use
- The Belleclaire, the Lucerne and the Belnord in the UWS are three of 139 hotels being used as homeless shelters during the Covid-19 crisis in New York City
- The city is paying $175 per person per night to house people to avoid COVID-19 outbreaks in shelters
- It's unclear how long they will be kept there; none of the hotels are accepting paying guests currently
- Upper West Side residents say they are terrorizing the neighborhood with drugs and crime
- They are complaining that they don't feel safe and local restaurant owners fear they are driving away business
- The only way for restaurants to make money is by offering outdoor dining but the owners say the homeless are approaching diners to ask for cash
- It coincides with a mass exodus of wealthy New Yorkers, many of whom will never come back to the city
- Mayor Bill de Blasio has turned on them, calling them 'fair weather friends' who ought to be taxed higher
- Governor Andrew Cuomo is begging them to come back and says the city desperately needs their money
Hundreds of homeless people who have been put up in luxury hotels on Manhattan's Upper West Side by the city as part of its efforts to prevent COVID-19 outbreaks in shelters are terrifying residents by urinating, sleeping and taking drugs in the streets.
In July, it emerged that 139 of the city's iconic hotels - which had been forced closed for months - had agreed to take in homeless people for $175 per person, per night as part of a scheme by the city to try to avoid a breakout of COVID-19 in homeless shelters.
The city has not released a list of the hotels but a source told The New York Post the scheme will run until October.
Among the hotels on the list are The Belleclaire, The Lucerne and The Belnord on the Upper West Side.
This week, residents of the neighborhood complained online about the people who are being housed in those hotels who they say are terrorizing the area. Police sources also told The New York Post that many of them are sex offenders.
The homeless-in-hotels scheme set up by de Blasio is one of many components to an escalating downward change in the city.
Many of New York's wealthy residents fled months ago - taking their disposable income and their tax dollars with them - and there are fears they may never come back. Crime is on the up but de Blasio has stripped the police force of $1billion in response to Black Lives Matter protests.
Some retailers and restaurants have been forced to close permanently and those who are hanging on face continuously changing and difficult rules, like having to sell 'substantial' amounts of food to customers to avoid crowds gathering.
De Blasio and Cuomo are enforcing checkpoints to stop tourists from 35 COVID hotspot states from entering the city without quarantining for 14 days too.
Large numbers of homeless men have been moved into three hotels in New York City's Upper West Side, much to the dismay of local residents, who have complained of drug use, public urination and cat calling. Pictured: A group of men loiter at Broadway and 79th Street
Homeless men were moved from dorm-style accommodation to the hotels in recent weeks so that they could have one or two people to each room - limiting the spread of Covid-19. Pictured: A group of people who appear to be homeless loiter at Broadway and West 95th
Upper West Side residents have reported seeing homeless men around the hotels urinating in public, openly using drugs and passed out on the sidewalk
Local Upper West Side residents fear that the homeless situation in the area is a ticking time bomb, with it costing authorities $175 a night to house a single person in the hotels
A Facebook group, in which residents have shared pictures of men urinating, masturbating and laying sprawled out on sidewalks near the hotels, has been set up and there are other complaints on Twitter.
'Our community is terrified, angry and frightened,' one organizer of the 1,700 member group, Dr. Megan Martin, told The Post.
The homeless were moved from dorm-style accommodation around the city to the hotels so that they can be housed one or two to a room in order to protect them from Covid-19 more effectively, officials have said.
Department of Homeless Services (DHS) Commissioner Steven Banks said Thursday: 'In order to defuse that ticking time bomb, we implemented a massive emergency relocation of human beings from those congregate shelters throughout the city, more than 10,000 in about eight weeks.'
However, local residents fear that the situation around the three hotels could be spiraling out of control.
The hotels in the Upper West Side are three out of 139 in the city housing homeless people according to a source cited by The Post from the Hotel Association of New York City.
The initiative is costing hundreds of millions of dollars according to the source, with FEMA covering 75 per cent, and the other 25 per cent being paid for by the city. Officials have reportedly confirmed this breakdown.
According to The Post's source, the contract to accommodate the homeless in hotels is set to run through until October, but is expected to be renewed.
One local community board member told the website that the DHS, who is handling the distribution of the funds, have not been transparent with the local neighborhood about the details of the scheme, and locals have been given little to no input or notice.
The board member, who chose to stay anonymous, said that they had been told the city was paying hotels $175 per day, per person, or $350 a day for housing two people in a room.
Pictured: The Belleclaire on Broadway, one of the three hotels in the Upper West Side being used as homeless shelters for men during the coronavirus crisis in New York City
A room at The Lucerne Hotel, one of the 139 where homeless people are being housed. It's unclear how many people are involved and what the arrangement is for their meals
A Facebook group has been set up by local residents to share pictures of homeless people in the Upper West Side as the crisis continues to grow. Pictures shared on the group have shown a number of homeless men sleeping on the streets in the local area around the hotels
'You do the math,' the board member said to The Post. 'It's a lot of money,' adding 'It feels like the 1970s. Everyone who can move out is moving out.'
Local parents are particularly concerned with the ten registered sex offenders that have been accommodated in the Belleclaire as of Thursday, according to the state sex offender registry.
Included in those ten are Luis Martin, 44, who assaulted and raped a woman in 1995, Roland Butler, 62, convicted in 2013 of raping a 16-year-old girl, Eddie Daniel, 59, convicted of abused a 10-year-old in 2011, Jonathan Evans, 29, convicted of abusing a 6-year-old, and Michael Hughes, 55, convicted of possessing child pornography in 2007.
Local residents have reported seeing fights, have been verbally abused or harassed, seen people spitting - despite the ongoing pandemic - and have also seen people looking for, or using drugs.
Nearly 300 homeless drug and alcohol addicts have reportedly been living at the Lucerne alone since last week, with one homeless man -Angel Ortiz, 60 - telling The Post 'whatever drug you can imagine is done there.'
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