welcome to usaapay.com

2020-

2020-08-07 b
Is this worse than letting raccoons into your attic?

Hundreds of new homeless turn Upper West Side into a spectacle of drugs and harassment: residents

Upper West Side residents say three hotels that are housing hundreds of homeless men during the coronavirus pandemic have turned the area into a spectacle of public urination, catcalling and open drug use.

Among those staying at the luxury Belleclaire on Broadway and the Lucerne on West 79th Street, and the more down-market Belnord on West 87th Street, are people who are mentally ill, recovering from drug addictions, and registered sex offenders.

Ten sex offenders are staying in a single hotel — the Belleclaire, which is just one block from the playground of PS 87.

“It doesn’t feel safe anymore,” nanny Michele McDowall, 39, told The Post.

She said she was recently offered crack by a pair of homeless men as she wheeled a toddler along Riverside Park at 79th Street.

“You want to buy crack?” she said they shouted repeatedly as she hurried past, and as the frightened 2-year-old girl in the stroller put her hands over her ears and cried, “Too loud!”

The homeless men have been moved from dorm-style shelters around the city so they can be sheltered one or two to a room to better protect them from COVID-19, officials explain.

“In order to defuse that ticking time bomb, we implemented a massive emergency relocation of human beings from those congregate shelters throughout the city, more than 10,000 in about eight weeks,” Department of Homeless Services Commissioner Steven Banks said Thursday. (read more)

______________________

Permission is hereby granted to any and all to copy and paste any entry on this page and convey it electronically along with its URL,
______________________