A protest march on Grand Avenue is planned for Saturday, August 27th. Hundreds of Maspeth Homeless Shelter protesters are expected to participate as the horns and whistles in front of the Holiday Inn Express Hotel on 55th Road off Maurice Avenue continue every night. The group of protesters will meet at 1:30 pm Saturday and make their way to Grand Avenue.
Meanwhile, at 1PM Thursday, a group of activists and legislators including Assemblywoman Marge Markey, State Senator Joe Addabbo and Councilwoman Elizabeth Crowley met will the city comptroller Scott Stringer about how to stop the shelter.
The discussion most important to the proposed Maspeth shelter at the Holiday Inn was that there could be room for negotiation with Acacia or DHS since the comptroller has not yet received a contract to use this facility as a shelter. The comptroller would do no more than verify that there was a meeting, but sources at the meeting said that the comptroller was likely to send a staffer to the August 31st CB5 public hearing. Word is that DHS will likely only send a staffer as well. The community board expects 2,000 people at the hearing at the Knockdown Center Thursday evening.
A source at the meeting also stated that the comptroller said his hands are tied. There is not much he can do if the paperwork is filled out correctly.
DHS specifically said that if the community wanted to have DHS ‘not use’ this location they would have to come up with alternate sites which could have 35 or more rooms. They gave the community 30 days to do this. As of now the community board refuses to look into offering alternative sites to DHS. The problem with that, according to one source who attended the meeting, “… if our community does not give them alternate sites then the mayor’s office and DHS could say that they gave us the opportunity not to use this hotel as a shelter, and we did not do anything about it.”
