To address the rising homeless population, the de Blasio administration has already opened 28 shelters during his tenure, but sometimes, the communities the shelters are opening in are not getting much notice ahead of time. NY1's Courtney Gross filed the following report.
Walk into the Verve Hotel in Dutch Kills in Queens, and it looks like any other budget-friendly accommodation. But any day now it's going to turn into a new shelter for about 200 homeless women.
Hotel employees will have to find new jobs.
"It's just different," said a person behind the counter at the hotel. "It was out of nowhere. So nobody was ready for this."
It will be one of 28 homeless shelters the de Blasio administration has opened so far. They are scattered throughout the city... everywhere but Staten Island.
Some neighborhoods are getting more than others, like community districts in the Bronx, or in Northern Queens or in Central Harlem.
Some of them are former hotels, like one in East Elmhurst, which opened this summer. The banner barely covers the old sign for the Clarion Hotel. It's now dubbed The Landing, where 169 homeless families can find a roof and a room.
"It's nice. Clean. Real nice," said Bobby Thompson, a resident at The Landing.
Some of these shelters have opened with just a week's notice to the community.
"I think there are significant issues with how homeless shelters get sited, often to the exclusion of community and even elected officials," said City Councilman James Van Bramer of Queens.
All City Hall has to do is give seven days' notice.
While city officials say they try to spread the burden around, there is a growing concern hotels will continue to be a target, given how easy it is to convert.
"While no one questions the need, there certainly is, from a city perspective, a district perspective. From a neighborhood perspective, there has to be a more holistic approach," Van Bramer said.
"That is something that we have heard, and it is something that we take seriously, and it is something we are actively working on,"
While the city may not be giving the community that much notice when it opens up these shelters, it is becoming more transparent in other ways. For the first time, it's allowing state officials to review inspection reports for every homeless shelter. It's all to make sure these new shelters remain clean and safe, no matter how many of them there are.