Another homeless shelter has opened its doors in Brooklyn, which means another legal headache for Mayor Bill de Blasio. Residents in Crown Heights are suing to block the opening of a new shelter for families with children. NY1's Courtney Gross filed the following report.
Bags of shoes and personal items were still being unloaded on Tuesday, the day after homeless families moved into a brand new homeless shelter on Rogers Avenue in Crown Heights.
"My church has been notifying me, but I didn't think they would do it this soon," said one person in the community. "It benefits other people but not the people in the neighborhood."
Some in the community are not welcoming it. A lawsuit was filed on Tuesday to try to stop the shelter from opening. The plaintiffs were not available to go on camera.
In a statement, a spokesman for the Department of Homeless Services said, "The doors are open at 267 Rogers, with ten families now residing there—and additional families excited to move into the location this week. We’re confident this matter will be resolved shortly so that we can give homeless families with children the opportunity to be sheltered in this high-quality facility as they stabilize their lives."
This is the second lawsuit the city faces as it looks to open 90 new homeless shelters in the next five years. That's how the mayor plans to restructure the shelter system: open new shelters so homeless families can be close to the communities they come from.
The mayor has called this Rogers Avenue shelter a model facility.
"When you visit the facility in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, you’re going to see something you never saw before. 132 families, overwhelmingly from Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Literally, the preference will be for people who come from that immediate neighborhood and immediately surrounding neighborhoods," Bill de Blasio said in February.
Several families who just moved in here did not want to speak to us on camera for this story, but they did tell us off camera that they were from Brooklyn. One woman told us she was from Bedford-Stuyvesant, and she said she was still too far away from her friends and family.
The city had planned to move in families every week until the shelter reaches capacity. It’s unclear if the lawsuit will change or delay those plans.