{"id":205690,"date":"2025-09-06T19:01:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-06T19:01:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/205690\/"},"modified":"2025-09-06T19:01:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-06T19:01:13","slug":"judge-blocks-nyc-from-opening-insane-homeless-shelter-5-feet-from-manhattan-grade-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/205690\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge blocks NYC from opening ‘insane’ homeless shelter 5 feet from Manhattan grade school"},"content":{"rendered":"

A state judge has nixed a controversial plan to open a city homeless shelter for ex-cons and drug addicts steps from a lower Manhattan elementary school.<\/a><\/p>\n

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron said the city failed to fully consider \u201call potential negative effects\u201d of the 106-bed facility planned for a former Hampton Inn at 320 Pearl St. \u2013 including the entrance being a mere five feet from the Peck Slip School<\/a>, and an outdoor smoking area near school windows.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are two, eight-hundred pound gorillas in the room,\u201d wrote Engoron in an Aug. 25 ruling.<\/p>\n

\"exteriorA judge has stopped the city from putting a shelter steps from a school. Helayne Seidman<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first is the fact that the proposal would place a shelter for troubled adults adjacent to a school for three-to-eleven-year-olds. . . . The second . . . is the City\u2019s cavalier attitude towards fulfilling its obligation to demonstrate that it seriously considered the siting criteria,\u201d such as compatibility to the adjacent school.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The city\u2019s \u201cargument that they demonstrated that they considered the juxtaposition\u00a0of the Shelter and the School by stating that they reviewed \u2018public facilities and institutions\u2019 within a 400-foot radius is whistling past the graveyard at best and disingenuous\u00a0at worst,\u201d the judge added.<\/p>\n

The city awarded nonprofit Breaking Ground Management a five-year, $42.3 million contract in January 2024 to run a \u201clow barrier\u201d shelter on the site, a designation with loose regulations where criminal records and other obstacles typically used to screen residents could be lifted.<\/p>\n

However, the NYC Department of Social Services waited until June 13, 2024 \u2013 right before summer break \u2014 to notify local elected officials, affected parents and community board members of its plans, The Post first reported. <\/a><\/p>\n

\"PeckParents slammed the city\u2019s plan to open a shelter so close to the school, and went to court last year to block the move. Helayne Seidman<\/p>\n

Irate parents filed legal papers in September 2024 seeking to block the opening, saying the city\u2019s decision \u201cto place the riskiest homeless population with possible mental, drug, criminal, and sex offender issues directly next to young children, our most precious and vulnerable population, is not only arbitrary, capricious and irrational, it is insane.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Under the judge\u2019s ruling, the city\u2019s Department of Homeless Services would have to conduct a new \u201cFair Share\u201d analysis that takes into account the proposed shelter\u2019s affect on the surrounding neighborhood. <\/p>\n

But it was unclear Friday whether DHS would do this, and the agency also declined to answer questions about the future of its contract with Breaking Ground. <\/p>\n

\u201cEvery neighborhood deserves to have the resources required to support New Yorkers experiencing homelessness on their path to stable, permanent housing,\u201d said DHS spokesman Nicholas Jacobelli. \u201cWhile we disagree with this court decision, we will be weighing all our options.\u201d<\/p>\n

Breaking Ground did not return messages.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A state judge has nixed a controversial plan to open a city homeless shelter for ex-cons and drug…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":205691,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,32458,113236,32459,39800,78797,5249,10476,5248,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,113237,36202,67,586,132,5230,68,1154,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-205690","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-department-of-homeless-services","10":"tag-elementary-schools","11":"tag-homeless-shelters","12":"tag-judges","13":"tag-lower-manhattan","14":"tag-manhattan","15":"tag-manhattan-supreme-court","16":"tag-metro","17":"tag-new-york","18":"tag-new-york-city","19":"tag-newyork","20":"tag-newyorkcity","21":"tag-ny","22":"tag-nyc","23":"tag-pre-kindergarten","24":"tag-smoking","25":"tag-united-states","26":"tag-united-states-of-america","27":"tag-unitedstates","28":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","29":"tag-us","30":"tag-us-news","31":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115158901409286507","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205690\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/205691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}