CBS New York report<\/a>.<\/p>\n\u201cThe new mayor must put an end to inhumane displacement policies for our migrant families,\u201d Won added to The Post this week. \u201cLet our children stay in their neighborhood shelter where they have built community within the last year and let them walk to their local school.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
City Hall officials on Friday defended the decision to convert the shelter along Greenpoint Avenue, arguing the brutal cold snap made it necessary to find sanctuary for adult homeless men.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe moved with urgency to expand low-barrier bed capacity for single New Yorkers experiencing homelessness \u2014 reconfiguring and optimizing existing shelter space to meet the moment,\u201d a City Hall spokesperson said, contending officials worked to accommodate the families\u2019 needs.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s administration said the evictions were necessary because of the brutal cold. Matthew McDermott for NY Post<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause responding to a crisis isn\u2019t just about adding beds. It\u2019s about protecting people\u2019s lives, their education, and their path to stability \u2014 all at once.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the evictions\u2019 abruptness rankled locals who\u2019ve long made peace with the migrant family shelter, which opened in 2018 as a \u201ctemporary\u201d facility.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe understand their plight and we were willing to hold on because it was still living up to the original intent, which was these were temporary and they would be closed,\u201d said Tom Mituzas, a member of the local Blissville Civic Association.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy were the men more important than the people already living there? I don\u2019t understand why there had to be a change. Why did they have to push them out?\u201d<\/p>\n
The Blissville Civic Association sent Mamdani and other local elected officials a Feb. 11 letter pressing for details about whether the single men\u2019s shelter would be permanent or temporary.<\/p>\n
Councilwoman Julie Won (D-Queens) condemned the evictions. Gabriella Bass<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, some families who lived in the shelter have been moved all the way into Jamaica, despite their children still remaining enrolled in PS 199 Maurice A. Fitzgerald School in Sunnyside, a stone\u2019s throw away from the shelter, a spokesperson for Won said.<\/p>\n
Won directed some of her fire at the Department of Social Services Commissioner Molly Wasow Park, an Adams appointee who recently tendered her resignation and who\u2019s last day was Monday.<\/p>\n
\u201cCommissioner Park has a responsibility to keep families in their community,\u201d Won said in a statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cDSS\/DHS evicted all 37 children and their families from a neighborhood shelter in our district, ripping them from the homes, friends, and routines that they relied on for months,\u201d Won said Friday. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt is deplorable that this agency did nothing to stop these evictions from happening in the dead of winter. There must be immediate policy changes at DSS\/DHS to halt all transfers and evictions during the school year\u2014all children deserve stability and protection.\u201d<\/p>\n
City Hall officials said kindergarten through sixth-grade students are entitled to busing if they\u2019ve been placed in temporary housing. Upper-grade students can receive OMNY cards, they said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two dozen destitute families with 37 school-aged kids were evicted from a Queens homeless shelter \u2014 despite desperate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":132991,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9468,9090,57,3411,9,56,63,65,64,122,5271,58,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-132990","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-homeless-shelters","9":"tag-long-island-city","10":"tag-metro","11":"tag-migrants","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-ny","14":"tag-nyc","15":"tag-nyc-headlines","16":"tag-nyc-news","17":"tag-queens","18":"tag-schools","19":"tag-us-news","20":"tag-zohran-mamdani"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}