After Court Loss, East Village Group Says Fight Over Mamdani’s Homeless Intake Center Plan Is Far From Over

One week after a Manhattan judge rejected an effort to block Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s plan to relocate a homeless intake center from Bellevue Hospital to the East Village, a neighborhood activist group says they are weighing an appeal while preparing the neighborhood for yet another social services center.“We are considering an appeal, trying to decide if that’s our best move,” an East Village resident, Trisha Goff, who is a member of the Village Organization for the Integrity of Community Engagement, or VOICE, tells the Sun.Ms. Goff is among several East Village residents and business owners who formed VOICE to file an Article 78 petition against the Mamdani administration, alleging officials unlawfully rushed the relocation of the Bellevue intake center to an existing one on 8 East Third Street. “We believed that if they had gone through the proper procedures, they would have seen this should not be on a narrow residential block with a high density of restaurants, hotels, and shops. It doesn’t make sense,” Ms. Goff tells the Sun.The Mamdani administration announced in March it would close the Bellevue intake facility on East 30th Street, an 850-bed facility in Kips Bay, by the end of this month due to its “severe state of disrepair.” The city would therefore convert an existing men’s shelter and drug treatment center operated by Project Renewal at 8 East Third Street into a citywide men’s intake center.In their petition, the group argued that the city had relied on Mr. Mamdani’s emergency executive orders to sidestep legally mandated reviews and analyses like the Uniform Land Use Review, or ULURP.They also argued the city made this decision without providing any adequate explanation as to why a site in the Village, which was already “shouldering more than its fair share” of social service centers like the Bowery Mission and the BRC Project Rescue facility, was selected in favor of other locations. In her June 10 ruling, a Manhattan Supreme Court judge, Sabrina Kraus, wrote that she “understands the basis for concern” raised by VOICE, including their “frustration with the lack of opportunity to be heard on an issue that may indeed change the character of their block and neighborhood.”Judge Kraus noted that the record “offered nothing” that explained why city officials selected East Third Street over other locations.Despite this, Judge Kraus wrote VOICE did not cite any mandatory factor that the city Department of Homeless Services was required to consider in relocating the intake facility and found no legal basis that the city’s move was “made in violation of law or in an arbitrary and capricious manner.”Ms. Goff said no one from the Mamdani administration has contacted VOICE since the ruling. This struck her as hypocritical on the city’s part in light of the mayor’s newly formed Office of Mass Engagement, which boasts an operating budget of $53 million.“Why has this administration invested $50 million to launch this new office of mass engagement, but they’re shutting our voices down?” Ms. Goff asks. She said she requested a meeting with her local representative, City Councilman Harvey Epstein, and was recently offered a conference over Zoom in July.Ms. Goff argues that despite Judge Kraus’s ruling, the petition exposed what she views as the city’s flawed and arbitrary process for selecting sites for homeless-services facilities. “How do the West Village and TriBeCa not have one? We’re going to have two intakes in two blocks,” Ms. Goff says.She adds: “I think the city does whatever the city wants to do.”

After Court Loss, East Village Group Says Fight Over Mamdani’s Homeless Intake Center Plan Is Far From Over

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