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.