Crown Heights, NY – The Bloomberg administration’s plans to close its intake center in the former Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital building on First Avenue and 28th Street outraged residents in Crown Heights, whose Bedford-Atlantic Armory shelter is the likely new location for the center.
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The Bellevue space, which also has a men’s shelter with 850 beds, is slated to become a hotel and conference center for the “adjacent medical and bioscience-related communities.” Homeless advocates believe few will want to make the nine-mile trek to the notoriously dangerous Bedford-Atlantic Armory, leading to an increase in the number of people staying on the streets.
Crown Heights is already “oversaturated” with social services, Council member Letitia James said yesterday. She called the move “misguided,” considering recent data showing 60 percent of street homeless are in Manhattan, while only 16 percent are in Brooklyn.
But Department of Homeless Services Commissioner Rob Hess said, “People living on the street are not going to a centralized intake center.”