STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — Community concerns over a rumored homeless shelter coming to the South Shore have been eased — at least for now.
In recent months, Staten Islanders and local elected officials have voiced concerns over a developer’s plan to construct a Richmond Valley hotel that they feared could someday be converted into a homeless shelter.
On Wednesday, Department of Social Services Commissioner Molly Wasow Park sent a letter to various elected officials who represent the district to inform them that the city has no plans at this time to use the site as a homeless shelter if a hotel is eventually built on the property.
“Although the owner continues to advance with construction of his private property at the identified site on Arthur Kill Road, there are currently no plans to proceed with a [Department of Homeless Services] shelter facility at this site,” Park wrote.
“If and when [Department of the Homeless Services] does proceed with the siting of a transitional housing facility in your district, we will notify you, the community board, and other elected officials promptly,” she continued.
The letter came in response to one penned by Assemblymember Michael Reilly in April imploring the agency not to issue the necessary authorizations for the planned hotel to be used as a shelter.
“The community has strong reason to believe that its intended purpose is to serve as a transient hotel, or, in other words, a homeless shelter. I cannot stress enough how strong community opposition is to even the idea of this development,” wrote Reilly, a Republican who represents the South Shore.
Property records from the office of the Richmond County Clerk show the two-lot property in question was purchased in 2023 for $3.5 million.
One lot has plans for a convenience store and gas station. The other has plans for a four-story building that is at times described as a hotel in some of the filings.
Public records show the LLC behind that purchase is a Nassau County-based company known as the Sandhu Group.
That company has also purchased a trio of Travis hotels between 2022 and 2023 that the city used as migrant shelters, and has developed a pair of Port Richmond lodgings — one that opened last year and another in its final stages of construction.
Several other areas around the city where the Sandhu Group has purchased properties have also seen protests and community backlash similar to what’s happened here on Staten Island.
In 2021, Assemblymember William Colton, a Democrat representing part of Brooklyn, took the company to task after it bought property in the Bath Beach section of his district.
Even if the Sandhu Group successfully constructs the 46-room hotel, it would need an interested mayoral administration before it could turn into a homeless shelter.
Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg made it a lucrative practice to use hotels as homeless shelters during his 12-year administration with locations popping up around the city, and owners reaping millions in city contracts.
Former Mayor Bill de Blasio wound down hotel shelters with the last site closing at the end of 2021, but the migrant crisis brought more than 200,000 people to the five boroughs, prompting Mayor Eric Adams’ administration to reopen some such locations.
The city set up emergency migrant shelters at several Staten Island locations, including a pair of Travis hotels under the same ownership as the site in Richmond Valley.
Adams has made little indication he plans to return to the full practices of the Bloomberg administration, but a new mayoral administration could theoretically change that.
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