Adams admin angers local leaders with plan for homeless shelter in overburdened Bronx area

A Bronx neighborhood that already has more than 20 homeless shelters is set to get another one — and the area’s City Council member recently joined community leaders in calling on Mayor Adams to put a stop to the “extremely disappointing” plan.

The development at 2248 Webster Avenue is in the Bronx’s 6th Community District, which already has 23 shelters operated by the Department of Homeless Services, according to a tally maintained by the local community board. Two hotels in the district are also currently being used as emergency housing for Latin American migrants.

Given those conditions, local Councilman Oswald Feliz sent a letter earlier this month to Adams and Department of Social Services Commissioner Gary Jenkins saying it’s untenable to open another homeless shelter in the neighborhood, which has one of the highest poverty rates in the city.

“Homeless families are in desperate need of resources and opportunity, and if [the Department of Homeless Services] wants to help them achieve stability, it should place them in neighborhoods with high opportunity, rather than consistently placing facilities in the poorest neighborhoods,” Feliz wrote in the Jan. 4 letter, which was obtained by the Daily News and has not been previously reported.

“It is extremely disappointing that DHS continues this practice, and not willing to take real steps to ensure that every community does their part to resolve this crisis. This is not only unfair, but also not good policy.”

Feliz, a first-term Democrat who endorsed Adams’ successful 2021 mayoral campaign, noted that the mayor has promised to “not overburden” individual neighborhoods with shelter and housing developments in favor of ensuring all parts of the city share that responsibility equitably.

“If this is something the administration truly believes, then it should practice it and should not place an additional shelter in a region with some of the highest amount of shelters,” Feliz wrote, adding that some affluent parts of the city have no shelters at all.

Spokespeople for Adams and the Department of Social Services did not immediately return requests for comment Wednesday.

Joining Feliz in calling on Adams to scrap the Webster Avenue shelter plan is Evonne Capers and Rafael Moure-Punnett, respectively the chair and district manager of the local community board.

Capers and Moure-Punnett sent a separate letter to Adams Monday saying he has created the appearance that his administration “is willing to sacrifice the well-being of shelter residents and community well-being” in order to “avoid protest from affluent communities.”

“Why is he afraid of crossing these affluent neighborhoods and [then] just dumping on the low-income neighborhoods, where they don’t expect any pushback?” Moure-Punnet told The News in a phone call Wednesday morning.

[ Migrants turned away from NYC’s overcrowded ‘relief centers’ after arriving from Colorado, sent to homeless shelters: sources ]

The Bronx beef comes as the city’s shelter system remains on the brink of collapse, in part due to a massive influx of migrants from South and Central America.

On Monday night, 69,384 people slept in shelters operated by the Department of Homeless Services, an all-time population high, according to city data. It’s unclear how many of those individuals are asylum seekers, but City Hall has said nearly 30,000 migrants remain in the administration’s care.

The Department of Homeless Services tally doesn’t paint a full picture, as it does not include migrants staying in the administration’s so-called Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Centers, most of which are being operated out of hotels by the Emergency Management Department.

With Josephine Stratman