By Gus Saltonstall
When last we heard about the new homeless shelter for women scheduled to go into the old Calhoun School building on the Upper West Side, plans called for an opening this fall. But, after a lot of back and forth with the city’s Department of Social Services (DSS) over the past few weeks, the Rag has learned the opening is delayed, and most likely will take place sometime in early 2025.
The Rag also viewed the proposed contract between DSS and Volunteers of America (VOA), the nonprofit that will run the shelter at 160 West 74th Street, between Columbus and Amsterdam avenues.
The contract, which is not yet finalized, calls for DSS to pay VOA $79.6 million for case management, job development, medical and legal services, mental-health help, food, security, and all the other costs that come with running a shelter, over the course of the contract.
While the two sides are still negotiating how that money will be specifically budgeted out, an employee from DSS told the Rag that the $79.6 million figure is not expected to change.
The length of the contract has multiple options. VOA told a Community Board 7 meeting earlier this year that it would run the shelter for nine years. But the proposed contract defines an initial period of four years and eight months, at which point VOA and the city would need to agree on a renewal. But the total period of the contract, with renewal, would run no more than nine years.
The Calhoun School building is owned by Bayrock Capital, a private development company, which purchased the building in the summer of 2023 for $14 million. Bayrock leases the building to VOA as a tenant, but although that lease is on file with the city, it is not accessible.
Bayrock originally said the property would be developed into a residential building.
The DSS employee clarified that the city agency has no contract with Bayrock.
Read More:
- ‘Save The Former Calhoun School Building’ Postcards Arrive in UWS Mailboxes
- Former UWS Calhoun School Building Will Be Women’s Shelter For At Least 9 Years: CB7 Meeting
- City Approves Building-Design Changes to Incoming 74th Street Shelter: What’s Next?
- UWS Community Board Votes in Favor of Building Design Changes for Incoming 146-Bed Shelter: LPC Vote Set for Jan. 9
- UPDATE: 146-Bed Women’s Homeless Shelter Opening Fall of 2024 in Former UWS Private School
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Is this shelter contract part of the FBI investigation of the Adams administration yet?
And when there is a shelter on every street with no change to the amount of homeless and mentally disturbed people living and walking our streets, then maybe some of you will vote for better leadership. One without payoffs, corruption, pie in the sky nonsensical theories and only people with common sense and financial acumen.
I am sure some would run for City Council, Borough President and the Mayoral position if they thought they had a chance. But they won’t, not until this neighborhood and this city finally says enough is enough. Millions and billions spent on the homeless and mentally ill and IT’S ONLY WORSE.
So here we have two giveaways in one. A lease to Bayrock capital which the city will pay for through VOA and then a contract with VOA. At this point wouldn’t it be prudent for the city to start to look for other providers after decades of failures? Yet the same players are given millions again and again. With all the property that the city owns why is it necessary to lease a building like this?
Read about what has happened with the old PS64 on the lower east side for a glimpse of just how corrupt our entire system is:
https://oldps64.com/
Interesting to read this and the current WSR article about the luxury building planned for the Mermaid Inn buildings.
The tenants who lived in those buildings lost their housing at some point….
A reader comment notes the apartments were chiefly rent stabilized (“affordable “) and the landlord held them vacant for about 5 years? Maybe more?
So folks lose their housing – and no one cares.
Then elected officials insist there is need for more development for apartments and need for more shelters……
These apartments would not have been vacant had the landlord been allowed to charge market rents. Rent control always leads to housing shortage. Oh, and there is something wrong when it is more profitable to rent to homeless than to people willing to pay more than $3000 a month for a studio!
These were not apartments. It was a school and before that I believe it was a Phoenix House. So rent controls would not have been a factor.
Thanks for point this out, there is indeed a connection. NYC has not kept up with building housing, since at least the downzoning and implementation of the FAR cap in the 1960s. Turns out when you don’t build enough new housing to keep up with demand, rents and prices go up above inflation and the poorest NYers get displaced. Unfortunately we are reaping what earlier generations sowed… the shelters are just a band-aid but can’t fix the problem.
80 million to run a homeless shelter for a few years. Someone making out like a bandit.
Could WSR do a complete inventory of how many homeless shelters/ assisted housing the entire UWS has? Including existing ones and future ones. Maybe mark them on a map.
It would be really handy to have the numbers.
VOA of course could have leased a much cheaper or larger building for far less money in other parts of the 5 boroughs but then Bayrock Capital would not get the windfall of ridiculous payments from VOA funded by taxpayers. NY is so corrupt.
Staten Island does seem like a good choice
Always makes me wonder who the folks complaining about these contracts and homeless shelters voted for. I can’t imagine it was Lee Zeldin or Curtis Sliwa. We make choices.
Exactly.
Step 1: I really like my private health care plan and my doctor.
Step 2: Votes for person who has repeatedly said she’d end private health care and force us into a lousy government-run system.
Step 3: What do you mean I can no longer choose my own provider? I’m forced into some awful state-run system? I can no longer see my trusted doctor? How did this happen ?!?
LOL
The City is spending all this money to house migrants? Sound weird
Maybe a less expensive solution like a tiny
house village for a fraction of the cost
Exceptional times require creative solutions
and the Tiny House could be a brilliant solution. A track of land should be found
and at 4K a house hundreds could be built
is a short time. It’s possible. It’s a solution
Wake up people – there is an election coming up – stop voting for ineffective idealistic career politicians. It’s destroying the city and no one – including the city’s most vulnerable – is being helped. Elect different city council – they have a big say in what happens – or doesn’t – in your neighborhood. We just keep pushing out those of us who pay all taxes for the city’s crappy programs that just line the pockets of shelter “providers”. Eventually there will be a bunch of progressive politicians and homeless left in the city with no one to fund their idealistic programs!
“VOLUNTEERS” of America. For $80 million over ten years.
If that’s not the most oxymoronic situation, I don’t know what is.
Which is the chicken and which is the egg? There seems to be a belief that shelters house homeless from our neighborhood, residents who were displaced because of luxury development. People who just need a little help so they can get back on track. But is that who gets placed in all these new shelters? Or, is the intent to move in people who can support the need for endless social services providers? This is part of the rinse and repeat cycle. The goal is not to make homeless self sufficient and end homelessness, but to create more govt dependency. If you build it they will; come. There are lots of people who would love to live on UWS but can’t afford it or don’t qualify for govt assistance. People who have the mental and physical capacity and ability to fill local jobs. It often seems that the jobs being created are the non profit social workers employed under these expensive contracts. It’s about their jobs and not the homeless being housed.