“The city is moving people faster than it can verify,” said Joshua Goldfein, a company employee. “Every day we meet people with disabilities in every hotel who were not considered when the DHS was re-placed and are therefore sent to places that are dangerous for them or cannot serve them.” Hundreds of people were affected, said he.
Isaac McGinn, a spokesman for DHS, said the city, which has completed transfers from 23 of the more than 60 hotels, has granted hundreds of accommodations. The city kept “the planned transition pending” from three others scheduled for Friday and Monday, including the Hotel on the fifth, which served as a haven for women with disabilities, pending a trial on Tuesday, he said.
Ms. Williams, 48, an unemployed pharmacy technician, showed papers stating that she had been granted an exemption and that she would go to a single or double room. However, she was supposed to be put on a bus that drove to a group accommodation on 52nd Street until the transfer was canceled.
Helen Strom, the social services and homelessness supervisor for the Urban Justice Center’s Safety Net Project, stood under the awning of a Korean restaurant interviewing customers and emailing city officials. She said the people at the hotel who were wrongly denied accommodation included women with lung diseases, chronic asthma and seizure disorders.
“You are blatantly breaking the law,” she said. “The mayor is focused on driving people out of midtown and affluent neighborhoods, and he cares about people’s safety.”
During the pandemic, the number of single adults in emergency shelters is increasing climbed to a record of 20,000 – partly because the virus and its economic consequences left many people homeless, and partly because the city offered hotel rooms that pulled people off the streets and subways.
More than 120 homeless people have died of Covid-19 and more than 4,000 have contracted the coronavirus, the city said. At least 7,000 homeless single adults have been vaccinated by the Homeless Department and an unknown number have been vaccinated through other programs.
A woman outside the hotel, Chantel Estrella, 31, who has asthma and panic attacks and who had also requested adequate accommodation, said the city was wasting everyone’s time. “The same efforts that they made to get us out of here,” she said, “should make the same effort to get us an apartment.”
