Can An Intake Center and a Recreation Center Coexist?
Would you feel comfortable attending or sending your children to a recreation center housed in a homeless men’s shelter? This is what the ongoing debate around a proposal to transform the Bedford-Atlantic Armory into a Homeless Men’s Intake Center and a Recreation Center essentially boils down to. In a community where many residents are already leery of sending their children to public schools, the prospect of sending them to play at a venue that doubles as a social service center for adult men, is understandably unappealing. Yet, a number of elected officials continue insisting that this pairing does not pose any unnecessary risks.
If you didn’t catch it, there was this article in the Daily News indicating that Brooklyn Borough president, Marty Markowitz, is supporting a proposal to convert part of the homeless men’s shelter at the Bedford-Atlantic Armory into a sports and recreation center. Markowitz’s declaration sounds like an enticing prospect, until one considers that the addition of a recreation center does not take the city’s controversial plan to convert the shelter into an intake center off the table. Rather the rec center is a quid pro quo for the community’s acceptance the intake center.
While our elected officials – notably the borough president and city councilwoman Letitia James – seem to be in favor of the proposal, and have vowed to raise upwards of $11 million collectively to help finance the $20 million project, some community groups are still staunchly opposed to the idea. Sandy Taggart, co-founder of the Crown Heights Revitalization Movement, which has been spearheading the efforts against the intake center says plainly “The two cannot coexist.”
Some point to the armories in Harlem and Park Slope, which serve as homeless shelters and recreation centers, as evidence that they can co-exist. However, Park Slope’s homeless population is exclusively woman and unlike what is proposed for Bedford-Atlantic, Harlem’s shelter is neither an assessment center nor an intake center, which arguably makes it difficult to do an-apples-to-apples comparison. What do you think?
So we ask again, would you feel comfortable attending or sending your children to a recreation center housed in a homeless men’s shelter? Could there be anything that might ameliorate any concerns that you may have? It’s important to let our elected officials know about this – the good, the bad, and the ugly.
So we are curious what the residents of Crown Heights (and Bed-Stuy for that matter) think of this idea. Fill out the poll.
Revision note (Updated 2:50 p.m. 2/5/10): In the original publication of this post, we indicated that the Harlem shelter is for women. It is not. However, CHRM has detailed the key differences between the shelter in Harlem and the proposal for the Bedford Armory. Does this sway you?
The Park Slope armory/shelter is for women. The uptown armory that has a track and field has a stable poputlation of men.
The Bedford Atlantic Armory Shelter is already an Assessment Center. The biggest difference is the shelter at the Bedford Atlantic armory is an assessment center for single homeless men. It is one of three assessment centers for the homeless in the city.
An assessment center is different from an ordinary shelter. The men who shelter there are being assessed for various problem conditions, e.g., psychiatric, substance abuse, health, etc. The men in the other city shelters have already been assessed or didn’t require assessment in the first place.
Additionally, the entrance to the track and field at the uptown armory faces the entrance to the very up-scale campus of Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. It looks like the hospital is carefully policing its front door.
If an intake center comes to the Bedford Atlantic armory, it will be added to the assessment center. This means to begin the process of entering the shelter system, about 14,000 men/year will have to traverse our communities to get to the armory. They won’t stay indefinitely but most of them will be new to the system and therefore entirely unknown to us and to the shelter system. Some will require a stay at the assessment center, some will be sent to other shelters and other housing, and problably some will immediately be sent to hospitals etc.
Popularity: 33% [?]
For me, the question of moving the intake center to Bedford-Atlantic is more a quality of life issue, and less one of safety. While I don’t think it makes sense to collocate the two, most of my objections over the intake center are not because I think the men that will be using it are especially dangerous. My main objection is that the introduction of 14,000 homeless men in crisis to our neighborhood will dramatically change everything about where we live. To make things worse, locating the intake point for emergency services so far from central Manhattan (where the majority of the homeless spend their time) makes it much harder for them to access services when they need them most. Bad plan. The City should scrap it.
They not only will be able to coexist, but a rec center like this would be a massive boon for the community. As someone that has seen both the Park Slope and Harlem / Washington Heights centers, I can attest to the fact that they are state-of-the-art. Those who think that these two entities could not coexist ought to consider if they think a rec center and a homeless shelter could coexist at opposite ends of the same city block, because that is a more accurate comparison, given how large these Armories are.
Crown Heights residents shouldn’t let stereotypes of homeless people poison efforts to improve the neighborhood. I oppose the movement of the intake center to Bedford-Atlantic but only because I know that it is a poor choice for the homeless, and it is being done by the city to make it physically harder for homeless men to access shelter services. I’ll add that Manhattan rec center / shelter is called Fort Washington, and the shelter used to be one of the most notorious in the city (there was a movie made, called The Saint of Fort Washington), and it has been a success. If the rec center is an offer by the city to try to pacify community opposition to moving the intake center, that’s one thing. But a rec center in the armory, in and of itself, would be a great thing.
I’m confused by the idea that Bedford Atlantic being an Assessment shelter means that it wouldn’t work for the Armory to also house a rec center. Fort Washington is a shelter specifically for men with mental illness and chemical addiction, and again, the pairing seems to be working there.
Bad idea and I wouldn’t set foot in it. It’s bed enough I can’t walk down the street without being heckled by men milling about. The last thing I want to deal with is that behavior at a facility I would be paying to use. It’s a quality of life AND safety issue for me. There are primarily men with mental illness, drug problems, and other types of addictions.
I also agree with the first poster. Majority of the homeless population is in Manhattan so any intake center should be located there.
The wording of the poll doesn’t lend itself to thoughtful responses. I am against the intake center and for a recreation center.
I fully agree with John above – badly worded poll. I hope that most of us don’t think in the reactionary terms that the responses are worded in. If there is a rec center collocated with an intake center I will probably go use it, but my wife probably won’t – she, like Ishtar, has had a number of bad experiences walking past the corners of Bedford and Pacific and Franklin and Pacific because of the men constantly hanging out there.
To Brian M: I agree that people should not stereotype the homeless. At the same time, most of us in the neighborhood are not inexperienced with the homeless. As has been reported here, Crown Heights North has 6X the borough average in social service beds, not to mention other social issues that we and our neighbors encounter and work on together. We are very familiar with communities grappling with the circumstances of homelessness, substance abuse, mental illness and other issues. We are not even asking here that the City reduce the current concentration of these kinds of services for people in our neighborhood. I think Most of us are willing to continue to shoulder a disproportionate share of the burden. We are, however, objecting to the City placing its ONLY intake center for all of NYC in our neighborhood ON TOP of the 6x the borough average that we already shoulder. You can be against a dramatic over-concentration of homeless services in one neighborhood without being against services for the homeless. I would even argue that being against an intake center in Crown Heights is actually being FOR better services for the homeless. Most homeless advocacy organizations in NYC, incidentally, agree with this point.
Mr Softee –
I think that we are in agreement on the point — as I wrote, that moving the intake center would be very bad for the homeless in NYC, and I am against it. I also agree that most homeless advocacy orgs know that the intake center moving to Bedford-Atlantic will be bad. I’ll take your word that Crown Heights has more than its proportionate share of homeless shelters, fine. But that point is not really conveyed in a survey where one of the choices is “Hell no. I wouldn’t step foot near that rec!” That does not indicate to me ‘our community is shouldering more than our fair burden of social services’ that says to me ‘oooh, scary homeless people’. If the point is to keep the intake center out of CH I don’t think a way to do it is to say that a rec center and intake shelter residents couldn’t coexist in the same huge armory. I second other commenters that this is a very poorly worded survey.
Thank you for the comments regarding the phrasing of the poll. Upon further review, we decided to change the language in the poll so that it better reflects the nature of the conversation this post was to engender.
We apologize for this lapse in judgment and will work to not repeat this error.
Sincerely,
NP Staff