A state Supreme Court judge ruled on Wednesday that New York City can move forward with plans to open a homeless men’s intake center in the East Village after a lawsuit from locals opposing it blocked the city’s efforts to do so for months.
Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Sabrina Kaus wrote that, while she understood the concerns of peeved East Villagers — who sued to block the intake center under an incorporated group called V.O.I.C.E. — there was no legal basis to prevent the city from opening an intake center at the 8 East 3rd St. center, which already functions as a homeless shelter.
“This Court understands the basis for concern raised by [V.O.I.C.E.], including in particular [their] frustration with the lack of opportunity to be heard on an issue that may indeed change the character of their block and neighborhood,” Kaus wrote in her Wednesday decision. “However … there is no legal basis to find that [the city’s] decision to relocate the intake center to East Third Street was made in violation of law or in an arbitrary and capricious manner.”
Representatives for V.O.I.C.E. said in a statement Wednesday that while they were “disappointed” with the decision, they appreciated Kaus’s understanding of their frustration with the city.
“[We] have lived in harmony with the unhoused for decades. Our concern has always been how the City rammed through this major change of use of a current homeless shelter without any community hearings or input,” the group said in a statement. “We are outraged that the City has chosen to hide behind legal technicalities rather than face the community.”
City Hall did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Previously, spokespeople for Mayor Zohran Mamdani have said it needs to move homeless men’s intake to the East Village site because of safety concerns where they are currently held: The city’s notoriously dilapidated Midtown Manhattan Bellevue shelter. The city announced it needed to close Bellevue to make repairs on March 5, just a day before a piece of the shelter’s ceiling allegedly fell on someone’s head.
V.O.I.C.E.’s suit argued that Mamdani did not have the legal authority to shift intake services from Midtown to the East Village without public review processes and “rushed” forward plans to do so in a way that raised public safety concerns for their neighborhood.
Kaus initially seemed to agree with those arguments, issuing orders blocking the city from moving intake services to the East Village for nearly two months, which drew criticism from Legal Aid Society attorneys who said V.O.I.C.E.’ suit was nothing more than East Villagers not wanting to live near homeless people.
“I’ve been in this business a very long time,” Goldfein previously told amNewYork. “I’ve seen a lot of cases like this. They are all the same. They raise all the same issues. There is no merit to any of these issues. The petition will eventually be dismissed, and the [intake center] will open.”
In her decision on June 10, Kaus said she ultimately agreed with the city that it had the legal authority to make regulatory decisions to shift the location of homeless intake services around its shelters when necessary without triggering public review processes.
While the judge said the city was right to argue that the general use of the East Village center wasn’t changing – it would still be serving homeless men – she seemed to still take the East Villager’s claim that the change may impact their daily life to heart, even though she acknowledged it had no legal basis.
“Essentially, the premises will continue to be used to provide services to the unhoused population,” Kaus wrote. “While the nature of those services will be different and a greater number of individuals will be coming to the premises, for shorter periods of time, there is no legal authority to support [V.O.I.C.E.’s] claim that an interior renovation to offer different services to a different group of individuals experiencing homelessness constitutes a site selection triggering [public] review.”
In a Wednesday statement on the ruling, Legal Aid said it was glad the decision recognized the city’s obligation to provide shelter to New Yorkers experiencing homelessness, it “remained concerned” about ongoing accessibility issues at the East Village center. The organization also emphasized that the city needed to look beyond the stopgap of providing emergency shelter to residents.
“New Yorkers experiencing homelessness deserve safe, dignified, and accessible shelter,” Legal Aid said. “But shelter alone is not enough. The City must also invest in deeply affordable, permanent housing solutions that address the root causes of homelessness and reduce reliance on the shelter system over the long term.”
The city is expected to promptly proceed with activating the men’s homeless intake center in the East Village.