The residents of a 200-bed men’s homeless shelter in the Woodlawn section of the Bronx were quietly moved and are currently being housed at a four-star hotel in Manhattan due to concerns over coronavirus transmission. Some residents and workers from the area couldn’t be happier.

On Saturday, May 16, as New York City started to see the flattening of the COVID-19 curve, the City’s Department of Homeless Services (DHS) transferred 200 homeless men, many with mental illness, out of the Jerome Avenue Men’s Shelter (JAMS), located at 3600 Jerome Avenue.

According to DHS, the shelter residents are currently staying in separate rooms at the once-empty OYO Times Square Hotel. According to a flyer for the 208-bedroom hotel, located at 157 West 47th Street, pre-pandemic room rates ranged from $138 to $228 per night. They are now going for between $186 and $207 a night. Special rates are available for first responders.

On May 24, in reference to the homeless men’s move, a worker at the Woodlawn and Jerome Corp Deli, a 24-hour grocery store located next door to the shelter, said, “It’s nice. It’s good for business, and now I have nice people again”. The store owner had previously reported to Norwood News that shop-lifting had been an issue and had attributed this to the shelter residents.

A female customer at the deli also approved of the move. “It’s good for the neighborhood because I’m tired of them smoking crack in our building, sitting on the steps and pretending the kids aren’t there. It’s just ridiculous,” she said, referring to the building she lived in which was located just around the corner from the deli.

She said that even though the majority of the homeless residents were gone, there was still a couple who sometimes came around her building to do drugs. She said she saw them spaced out in the building smoking crack one day and when she told them to get out, they put their hands up and asked, “What do you want us to do?”. She said she told them to, “Get the (expletive) out,” adding that she was exasperated that they tended to hang out on the first-floor lobby with a crack pipe in their hands. “It’s crazy,” she said. “I’m happy they’re gone.”

The customer then said she heard a rumor that the JAMS building was to be converted into a women’s shelter, but the deli worker said, “No, no, they said they were bringing them back,” referring to the homeless men who used to reside there. “They took them for some reason but they’re coming back in three or six months,” he said.

The customer then said she thought all the JAMS residents had the coronavirus, and that the City couldn’t leave them there because of social distancing. “With the new laws coming in, they can’t be so close together,” she said. “They have to be in their own rooms because they won’t be able to social distance, because they just have bunk-beds next to each other”. She then added, “I think they are playing up the virus, and they’re cleaning out the building”.

In mid-May, Norwood News queried the City’s count of COVID-19 cases per ZIP code. In the dataset prepared by the City’s health department, the group with the highest number of cases out of all the ZIP codes listed, had no ZIP code assigned to it, and instead included an “N/A” reference.

A City representative provided an email explanation on May 14 writing, “Individual [COVID-19] cases are classified by the ZIP code of residence. Cases listed under the N/A category are cases for which we do not have an address for the individual, so we can’t assign them to a ZIP code.” Norwood News asked if that meant those cases referred to homeless people. The representative said he couldn’t speak to the possible circumstances as the [case] information was collected at the point of testing by the relevant health care provider.

The COVID-19 data is tracked daily. For the dataset in question, out of the 5,589 people who were tested and who did not have a ZIP code, 5,247 tested positive. In order words, 93.88 percent of people who were tested and did not have a ZIP code, tested positive for the virus. Curiously, the latest available dataset of COVID-19 cases broken down by ZIP code excludes this “N/A” category. Norwood News queried this with the City’s health department.

On July 15, a representative wrote in part, “We changed the way we were updating that particular file on 6/8″. You can see that the last time we updated the data for tests-by-zcta was 6/8, and we posted a comment on 6/9 referencing this change”. The representative added that as part of some changes to the manner in which the department collated the datasets, they no longer include information on data that is missing a ZIP code.

Back at the deli, when asked when was the last time the female customer had stayed at a four-star hotel, she responded, “[Expletive], I’ve never. I don’t think I got one when I went on vacation. These (expletive) are loaded,” she then said, referring to the homeless men now staying at the hotel. “I don’t care. I don’t even get a four-star hotel when I’m on vacation – maybe a three-and-a-half-star hotel,” she said, as both she and the deli employee laughed.

On May 29, a statement was issued by Isaac McGinn on behalf of the City’s social services and homeless services departments in the context of the pandemic. “At DSS, we’re continuing to implement tiered strategies and proactive initiatives to combat COVID-19, protect the New Yorkers who we serve, and ensure anyone who needs it, is connected immediately to care, or to [self-] isolation and the use of commercial hotels is central to this work,” the statement read.

In fact, under the City Charter, the City has an obligation to provide shelter to every New Yorker. The 1979 lawsuit Callahan v. Carey paved the way to ensuring the right to shelter for homeless men, women, children, and families in the City. The Charter also details the minimum standards which must be met in shelters, including basic health and safety standards.

The DSS statement continued, “Through these efforts, our essential staff have been able to help more than 900 New Yorkers effectively isolate, resolve their conditions, and depart isolation. At the same time, through these strategies, we have also proactively relocated, and continue to proactively relocate thousands of individuals from targeted shelters to commercial hotel settings out of an abundance of caution, including seniors and single adults from larger congregate locations who are not sick at this time”.

The statement concluded, “As of this past weekend, we can report that approximately 10,000 individuals, well over half of all the single adults experiencing homelessness who we serve, are now residing in commercial hotel settings, with that number increasing up to 11,000 by next week, enabling these New Yorkers to more effectively isolate, while also increasing social distancing at the shelters from which they moved. Every day, we’re redoubling our efforts and evolving with the situation to ensure we’re supporting our clients in all that we do, and we continue to explore new strategies and policy responses as this situation unfolds”.

BronxWorks, a community-based organization that runs JAMS, could not say if or when the men would return. It was also unknown if they were receiving the necessary treatment for mental illness and drug addiction that they needed at their new location.

Later in June, the De Blasio administration followed up on discussions on the use of commercial hotel space to house the homeless, as DHS estimated relocating up to 1,000 shelter residents per week, mostly from single adult shelters to commercial hotels.

DHS was, at that point, also taking steps to manage social distancing at remaining shelters by reorganizing beds, spacing chairs in rooms, and setting stricter room capacity limits. In addition, shelters were canceling and limiting gatherings, installing Plexiglas at staff stations, adding signage, and providing face masks to all shelter staff members and clients. DHS were also providing security at any hotels being used for shelter clients to help limit gatherings and enforce social distancing.

Meanwhile, Bronx homeless activist and author, Michael Joseph Vessio, has self-published a 353-page book entitled, “Psychedelic Shacks”, in which he describes his three years in the shelter system. He described the book as an exposé of the system, and said it is illustrated with photographs, “deep throat” memos, testimonies, and also includes a chapter called “JAMS-gate”.

In it, Vessio alleges that BronxWorks, is “a criminal organization”. “The entire $1.8 billion budget for the DHS shelter system is corrupt, ripe with fraud, and neo-slavery,” he said. “What my book illustrates; a 5-year-old can figure out.”

Norwood News made several unsuccessful attempts to contact a number of BronxWorks offices for comment. On Monday, July 13, one BronxWorks employee who answered the phone could only say that she had no idea if or when the men would return to JAMS, or if there were plans to repopulate the now-empty shelter with women.

On Friday, July 15, an unidentified BronxWorks employee said, in response to the allegation about alleged criminality, “This is not a criminal organization and I can’t speak on this matter anymore”. Asked if BronxWorks does good work helping the homeless, he replied, “Absolutely, always.”

When Norwood News tried to place a number of calls to individual rooms at the OYO Times Square Hotel, they were directed to management, while repeated attempts on July 13 to reach management were unsuccessful.

Meanwhile, Vijay Dandapani, CEO of the Hotel Association of New York City, said the hotel industry won’t be able to recover in any meaningful way from the pandemic until at least 2023, and more likely 2024. Since New York City was declared a disaster area, it’s possible that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is currently picking up the tab for housing the homeless population in City hotels. Norwood News contacted both FEMA and the State health department for comment. The State health department referred us to other City agencies for comment. FEMA has not responded.

In April 2020, Coalition for the Homeless estimated that there were 60,422 homeless people, including 13,861 homeless families with 20,494 homeless children, sleeping in the City’s municipal shelter system each night. Families make up more than two-thirds of the homeless shelter population.

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Welcome to the Norwood News, a bi-weekly community newspaper that primarily serves the northwest Bronx communities of Norwood, Bedford Park, Fordham and University Heights. Through our Breaking Bronx blog, we focus on news and information for those neighborhoods, but aim to cover as much Bronx-related news as possible. Founded in 1988 by Mosholu Preservation Corporation, a not-for-profit affiliate of Montefiore Medical Center, the Norwood News began as a monthly and grew to a bi-weekly in 1994. In September 2003 the paper expanded to cover University Heights and now covers all the neighborhoods of Community District 7. The Norwood News exists to foster communication among citizens and organizations and to be a tool for neighborhood development efforts. The Norwood News runs the Bronx Youth Journalism Heard, a journalism training program for Bronx high school students. As you navigate this website, please let us know if you discover any glitches or if you have any suggestions. We’d love to hear from you. You can send e-mails to norwoodnews@norwoodnews.org or call us anytime (718) 324-4998.