NYC is desperate to house the homeless. A bitter fight in the Bronx over housing people leaving Rikers shows why that’s so hard
A fierce dispute over a proposal to move formerly incarcerated people from Rikers Island into a hospital campus in a middle-class Bronx neighborhood raises a critical question for New York in the post-COVID era.
With escalating rents and an affordable housing shortage, historic numbers of New Yorkers are experiencing homelessness. New Yorkers are clamoring to get the homeless off the streets and out of the subways.
But the increasingly contentious dispute in Morris Park illustrates how wide the gap can be between housing solutions that look good on paper and the reality of making them happen. Those who would move from Rikers into the new facility have complex medical needs and would be, without help, vulnerable to ending up on the streets.
This aerial photo shows Rikers Island, New York's biggest lockup, June 20, 2014. (Seth Wenig/)
The proposed project by NYC Health + Hospitals/Correctional Health Services would place dozens of the city’s most vulnerable recently released Rikers Island inhabitants into affordable studio apartments on a hospital campus with wraparound services to support their medical needs and help them reenter society.
“This is what it takes to do 100 units,” Nicholas Dagen Bloom, a professor of Urban Policy and Planning at Hunter College, said. “How do you get to six [thousand]? How do you get to tens of thousands? It seems pretty clear to me that it’s hard to imagine how you can do that in the face of so much neighborhood resistance.”
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But residents of Morris Park, where the project is proposed, say they’ve already carried their fair share of the city’s burdens and want no part of the plan.
“They keep putting these social experiments in the Bronx,” said Al D’Angelo, vice chairman of Bronx Community Board 11 and head of the Morris Park Community Association. “They’re putting us in harm’s way.”
Staggering numbers
Homelessness in New York City has reached the highest levels since the Great Depression, according to the Coalition for the Homeless. There are approximately 60,000 homeless people in the city.
“I do think this is really just the beginning of the kind of pressure on neighborhoods, and neighborhoods of all kinds whether they be poor neighborhoods or wealthy neighborhoods, basically to host supportive and affordable housing moving forward,” Bloom said.
The Bronx project is a more humane and cost-efficient way to meet a dire housing need, say proponents.
The initiative, called Just Home, would convert a currently unused building on Jacobi Medical Center’s campus, 1900 Seminole Ave., into studio apartments operated by the Fortune Society, a nonprofit.
The initiative, called Just Home, would convert a currently unused building on Jacobi Medical Center’s campus, 1900 Seminole Ave., into studio apartments operated by the Fortune Society, a nonprofit.
The majority of the apartments will be available to recently released people from Rikers Island with “complex medical needs,” which are conditions like Stage 4 cancer or congestive heart failure, Jeanette Merrill, a spokeswoman for NYC Health + Hospitals/Correctional Health Services said. Licensed clinical social workers, peer workers and specialists, in addition to 24-hour security, will be available on site.
Construction has not started on the building, which still needs final approval from the City Council and Health + Hospitals Board of Directors, and the first tenant wouldn’t move in for another three years. The number of units is still being finalized — earlier versions of the proposal showed 100 units, but a spokesman said Wednesday there will be 70 units total.
“This project is really exciting to us, because nobody’s meeting the needs of these people — the people who have complex medical needs and are incarcerated because they have nowhere to go,” Joanne Page, president and CEO of the Fortune Society, said, adding that many of the people who Fortune works with are pretrial detainees, meaning they have not been convicted of a crime.
Around 30% of the proposed building would also house low-income renters through a lottery system.
The potential new residents, many of whom use wheelchairs, are on dialysis or on oxygen, pose no safety risk for the community, Page said.
“I think we can dispel much of the misinformation and much of the opposition by being transparent and showing that we have a history of being good neighbors,” Page said, referring to a more than decadeold supportive housing development in West Harlem also operated by the Fortune Society. “And that this is not, as one person said, a social experiment that is unknown. This is a replication of our successful housing.”
Not here
So far, Page’s outreach tactics have not worked.
On July 19, representatives from the Fortune Society, Health + Hospitals and others in support of the project gathered to speak to the community at a public meeting. Hundreds of furious Morris Park residents packed into a banquet hall to voice their distaste for the project in what Morris Park resident Michael Kaess called a “screamfest.”
A petition circulating online has nearly 1,000 signatures, and flyers expressing outrage at the project are sprinkled throughout the neighborhood.
“We have more homeless shelters than any other borough,” D’Angelo said. “We’re the poorest. We’re the least educated. We have the most crime than any of the other boroughs.”
Frank Vignali is also vehemently opposed to the project. He said the Bronx is too-often used as a dumping ground for citywide problems, while needs within the community for senior housing and early childhood care aren’t fully met.
“We will not tolerate Rikers Island inmates,” Vignali said “ … It’s incredible that they have the gall to even think about doing something like this.”
Vignali has owned a home in Morris Park since the ‘80s and lived in the Bronx his entire life. He has countless fond memories of trips to the Bronx Zoo and Yankees games. He built a career as an NYC firefighter before retiring as captain earlier this year. But lately, he’s started to think the unthinkable.
“I love the Bronx,” Vignali said. “I love it. I love it inside out. I know everything about it. ... But you know what? It’s just getting very frustrating. And, and for the first time in my life… I have thoughts: Maybe I should have left a long time ago.”
Irene Estrada, a community activist who lives in nearby Pelham Gardens, said she’s organized about 200 area mothers who oppose the project. Estrada worries about security, picturing former Rikers inhabitants wandering the same blocks her grandchildren play on.
“It’s not safe for the community,” she said. “It leaves a lot of uncertainties when it comes to the security, the location, for the children and for the elderly.”
Progress at risk
Community opposition is one of the biggest barriers to housing developments, said Vicki Been, faculty director of NYU’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy. When communities take action to oppose a project, developments can be canceled, delayed or have funding cut.
Morris Park knows this: In March, the city canceled a 140-bed proposed shelter in the neighborhood after it was met with strong community opposition.
Community District 11 is currently the only district in the Bronx without a Department of Homeless Services shelter.
“When we talk about development in my community, we must ensure that the community is involved to address any concerns,” Marjorie Velázquez, the City Council representative for the district, said. “I cannot support any project that does not offer my community a seat at the table nor has attained community support.”
A woman walks along Morris Park Ave. in the Bronx in this file photo. (Jefferson Siegel/)
Roxanne Delgado said she opposed the shelter earlier this year but supports Just Home, because it creates permanent affordable housing instead of “revolving doors.”
“We are in dire need of affordable housing, and we also have to do our fair share where we provide services to the most vulnerable and at risk because if we don’t, they become a problem for us everywhere,” Delgado, 50, a consultant, said.
“Not providing them with the medical treatment after their release is basically a death sentence,” Delgado said. “That, I don’t agree with. I don’t believe that, to people who already did their punishment and have medical issues, we’re saying, ‘Well, that’s their problem. They’re criminals, they’re ex-con. So let them die on the street.’”
