Following acrimony by residents over the sudden boom in homeless men roaming the streets of Wakefield and Edenwald sections of the Bronx, Comptroller Scott Stringer plans to share the locations of shelters that have quietly opened across the neighborhood.

Stringer, a critic of the mayor’s handling of the homelessness crisis that’s swept the city, promised residents that an investigation will be launched. He distinguished an investigation with an audit, which the latter can take a year and a half to complete.

“[Y]ou don’t want that,” Stringer told an audience at a town hall event his office hosted on July 24.

Councilman Andy King, representing the suburbanized neighborhoods, told Stringer that requesting addresses of newly opened shelters from the city Department of Homeless Services (DHS) yields no results. “When I ask, I can’t get an address,” said King.

The request was made shortly after Carolina James, an Edenwald resident, outlined her experience in noticing a larger homeless population settle around her area of East 216th Street and Willet Avenue near Regent High School.

“It’s like taking, say, two big air balloons, putting a whole bunch of people in it and all of a sudden, this year, in just a few months, you see homeless people all over the place. All over,” said James, drawing support from the audience.

Stringer initially answered the question without directly responding to it, blaming “siloed” city agencies like DHS and the city Department for Housing Preservation and Development for working exclusively of each other.

“The city has purposely come in and put them in our neighborhood,” said James, referring to the homeless.

There are 379 buildings that are deemed shelters across the Bronx, though it’s unclear how many are located in the Edenwald/Wakefield sections of the Bronx. DHS usually tells the community, through its community board and elected representatives, that a traditional shelter is coming one month before it officially opens.

The Comptroller’s Office, deemed the city’s chief accountant when it comes to the procurement of services, registers nonprofits contracted by the city to perform services. That often includes those nonprofits that operate homeless shelters. In most cases, nonprofits include the shelter address expected to open in the community. Confidentiality laws exempt domestic violence shelters from having their addresses revealed.

But the Comptroller’s Office has found that even when a contract comes before registration, the shelter is already operating “a year or two before it comes to us for registration” as deputy comptroller Lisa Flores explained, creating a misaligned process.

“The Comptroller’s given us a charge in holding DHS accountable for the safety of those shelters before we register them and there are many, many contracts for DHS that do not get registered until we have enough documentation,” said Flores.

Stringer suggested forming a working group to get a sense of where possible shelters can be found.

“[S]neaking around a community builds distrust, hurts the people who are struggling and doesn’t do justice for hard working community people who also want to feel safe in the community,” said Stringer.

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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.