Troubled motel is scene of infant’s death

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A 3-month-old boy was found dead Tuesday morning at the Van Cortlandt Motel, which the city has been using as a temporary shelter for homeless families with children, police and local officials said. 

The baby was found dead on the bed, where the mother was also sleeping, a spokesperson for the 50th police precinct said. The family – one of the dozens of homeless families staying at the motel across Broadway from Van Cortlandt Park – had only moved into the motel this month, the police spokesperson told The Press. 

The mother was hospitalized, the spokesperson said, adding that police were investigating. The mother also has another child, who was also staying at the motel, the spokesperson said. Few details were available early in the investigation by press time Tuesday. 

The use of the Van Cortlandt Motel by city authorities to house homeless people has long been a source of criticism from Riverdale’s residents, leaders and politicians. 

“Conditions in this motel are absolutely awful,” Community Board 8 chairman Daniel Padernacht told The Press on Tuesday. He described the motel as an unfit place for children to live. 

The tragedy came just days after the board voted on Oct. 13 to denounce the Department of Homeless Services for moving some 30 families into the motel, despite promises to stop using it as a homeless shelter. 

For months until late September, the motel had housed dozens of single homeless men. The city had promised to relocate the men – but had replaced them with dozens of homeless families by late September. The reshuffle prompting an outcry from local politicians, Community Board 8 leaders and the area’s residents over what they described as broken promises. 

“You snuck them in,” Charles Moerdler, the chairman of the board’s land use committee, charged during the panel’s Sept. 29 meeting. “You made a representation to the board – and you lied.” 

During the impassioned debate, speakers also argued the motel was an unsafe place for children to live, accused the city of having no clue about how to handle the problem of homelessness, and charged that the motel’s long succession of homeless guests, some of whom may have suffered from addiction or mental health issues, have long been a source of disruptions in the neighborhood. 

The Homeless Services Department maintains it was forced to use the motel to accommodate a surge in homeless people last summer, and denies having misled Community Board 8 or Riverdale’s residents. 

The number of homeless people staying at the motel appeared to be fluctuating. At the Sept. meeting, a chief special services officer at the city’s Human Resources Administration, Daniel Tietz, said about 30 families were staying there. 

But more people appeared to have moved in after the September meeting, based on the police account that the family whose baby died Tuesday had only arrived this month. 

Van Cortlandt Motel, CB8, Daniel Padernacht, 50th precinct, Anna Dolgov