69°
MOUNT VERNON, N.Y. – Mount Vernon leaders and residents are irate over a contract approved by Westchester County to use the Friendship Worship Center, 261 E. Lincoln Ave., as a homeless shelter.
George Oros, chief of staff for County Executive Rob Astorino, said the Friendship Worship Center would operate as a warming center for up to 14 people from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. But residents and leaders in Mount Vernon said that is not acceptable.
County Legislator Lyndon Williams (D-Mount Vernon) held a public hearing on the issue Thursday night to listen to concerns from residents, who said they were not notified before the contract was approved. Williams said the opposition he and his constituents have to using the building as a homeless shelter is not about the homeless population, but about how Mount Vernon cannot consistently be used as a “dumping ground” for the county’s social problems.
Resident Robert Latimer, who works across the street from a homeless shelter in Yonkers, said the homeless population has nowhere to go and roams the streets after they are released from the shelter in the morning.
“Where are these people going to go?” Latimer said. “The Amani School is there, so the county should find a better location soon.”
Resident Sharon Johnson said she pays too much in taxes to have a homeless shelter opening by her house.
“I love people, but when I move into a neighborhood for the protection of my children, there should be a solution,” Johnson said. “This should have never happened.”
Board of Education member Eli Goodside said that East Lincoln Avenue is one of the last middle class sections of Mount Vernon. Goodside said the county comes off as saving other municipalities in Westchester but forgetting about Mount Vernon.
“The definition of colonialism is to take something out without putting something in, which is what this is,” Goodside said.
Comments (2)
I think it is really time for us to take action for this not only the legislators. Budget proposals and funding should be well planned for this issue. Homelessness is a decade dilemma so we should prioritize and hopefully in the coming years there will be no more homeless person in the street. Thanks to some private sectors and institutions who take part in this issue. A test was publicized last year in Austin, Texas, called “Homeless Hotspots,” where homeless people were paid to carry around cellular Wi-Fi hotspots. There was a lot of critique made of exploitation and so on, but irrespective, the experiment actually worked. Plus, there were 13 participants in the experiment. Of those 13, 11 are no longer homeless as the money they received for it was enough to get them into housing. Several earned more than $600 from it. Read more at: Homeless Hotspot
Not long ago, County Executive Astorion and his staff determined that the WestHELP facility in Greenburgh was surplus -- no longer needed because there was no longer a homeless problem in Westchester County.
Despite the heat from a settlement agreement with HUD about fair and affordable housing, CE Astorino stopped Westchester County funding to support the (now forme) WestHELP facility -- which was designed and built to provide affordable transitional housing and high-quality support services to 108 households at capacity -- thus the facility was quickly closed and became vacant.
Many of us have stood by and watched helplessly while the WestHELP Greenburgh facility -- built at a cost of about $14 Million of 1990 public dollars -- has become a political pawn and a prime example of why electing officials to manage our public domain is a bad model, pure and simple.
A decision was reached in 1990 -- and an agreement was signed by elected officials -- restricting the use of the Greenburgh site on the campus of Westchester Community College -- to provide affordable housing for at least 30 years.
Why now is it appropriate to create new affordable housing slots for homeless individuals in Mount Vernon in the same facility as an elementary school when we have 108 vacant affordable housing units in Greenburgh?
Does Mount Vernon need more subsidized affordable housing units while Westchester County is doing battle with HUD on a consent decree which obligates the County to develop affordable housing in economically and racially segregated communities to help reduce patterns of racial and ethnic segregation?
Am I living in a parallel universe?