What Really Brought Down a Queens Shelter
Kids play the NIMBY card adorably
This month’s dust-up in Elmhurst, Queens over a proposed commercial SRO had all the elements of good old-fashioned AIDSphobic urban tussle. Residents, in a display of Not-in-My-Backyardism, protested. Council members got involved, attending meetings where community members voiced outrage and a protest with cute neighborhood kids. The New York Daily News reported the outrage. And then the HIV/AIDS Services Administration (HASA) decided not to refer clients to the SRO.
But sources familiar with the situation say that the reality of the disheartening situation isn’t quite as it appears. The Human Resources Administration (HRA), which oversees HASA, is not referring clients to a Queens shelter not because of community hysteria but because the Queens Alliance, the organization running the shelter, violated its Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) by revealing that the new facility would be housing HIV-positive people.
An Open letter to the Elmhurst community handed out at a July 1 community meeting from the Queens Alliance board of directors answering questions about the shelter stated:
Q: Is the 58th Avenue Emergency Shelter an HIV/AIDS treatment center?
A: No. There are no medical treatments on site. Only HIV/AIDS positive individuals who are asymptomatic may be referred to this facility.
Q Whom do you serve?
A: Adults needing simple emergency shelter owing to various life hardships. These are persons referred
by the City of New York Human Resources Administration, and others. Look around the room now,
the faces you see. Please remember that some of them, if befallen with problems some day, could be
located temporarily at the 58th Avenue facility.
Queens Alliance Vice President and Board of Directors member Yolanda Martin-Garibaldi said that she was unaware of the letter although she she was at the July 1 meeting where it was handed out.” “That was a letter sent by the attorney. We can’t say that there are HIV-positive clients. I wouldn’t do that.”
A later version of the letter omitted the sentence “Only HIV/AIDS positive individuals who are asymptomatic may be referred to this facility.” But the damage had already been done and the letter, in addition to the citywide media coverage, caused HRA to renege on the contract.
“It seems HASA did the right thing if they did cancel the contract. Queens Alliance crossed a boundary by discussing the HIV status of potential residents,” said New York City AIDS Housing Network (NYCAHN)Executive Director Sean Barry.
Classic NIMBY
But Barry noted, a more disturbing part of this story is the reaction of the neighbors to the proposed shelter, which was to be in an underserved area.
“Any time there’s a NIMBY reaction that fails to recognize the need for housing the homeless, that’s frustrating. What’s straight-up nauseating is that this is a case of AIDSphobia in 2009,” Barry said. It’s unclear if the community was reacting against the fact that they didn’t want people with HIV living there or if there were other factors involved. The way it’s been portrayed is homeless people with HIV. There’s no place for any form of prejudice against homeless people in this society.”
Carl Stubbs, a member of NYCAHN who lives in Queens, said the community members were going off misguided prjeduices. “People don’t understand and aren’t educated,” he said.
Rosemarie Daraio, president of Communities of Maspeth and Elmhurst Together association, said that outrage about the shelter had nothing to do with AIDSphobia and the neighbors were upset because they didn’t want another public housing facility, where there was a house for people with mental disabilities across the street. “They feel that one facility on the block is sufficient and are concerned with the oversaturation on one block. And God forbid there could be altercations between the two houses,” Daraio said.
And local politicians validated the neighbors’ concerns. Councilmember Melinda Katz sent a representative from her office to the neighbors’ rally, and Councilmember Elizabeth Crowley, who, although she doesn’t represent the neighborhood, said at a rally, “I’m on the community’s side. This, from what we know of right now, is not good for our community. We demand answers.”
See Crowley at the rally:
In an e-mail to the Queens Tribune, Crowley said “I think communication is important and making sure all sides are talking through problems will go a long way to making this facility something we can all embrace, and Council Member Katz is working on it.”
Ben Branham, a spokesperson for Katz’s campaign for City Comptroller, said Katz didn’t endorse the community outrage but that “it’s the job of a council person to represent anyone in the district.” He added, ““It’s a situation where people got angry, and it was frustrating to see such opposition emerge. We want the housing in a site that works”
The Queens Alliance still has the lease for the property, and is unsure how it will proceed.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nutrichris/3710287871/in/photostream/
Posted on August 7, 2009 at 1:55 am
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