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Homeless pulling out of Van Cortlandt Motel

PLUS: CB8 wants multifamily developer investigated

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Come January, the Van Cortlandt Motel might have to go back to being just that — a motel.

Officials with the city's homeless services department told members of Community Board 8 that it plans to pull more than two dozen families living at the motel at 6389 Broadway by the end of the year. The move, according to homeless services first deputy commissioner Jackie Bray, is part of Mayor Bill de Blasio's plan announced last February to reduce hotel and cluster sites to shelter the homeless by 45 percent.

"It is suboptimal," Bray told members of CB8's land use committee Thursday night at The Riverdale Y. "It is not great to shelter homeless New Yorkers in commercial hotels, but we do it out of necessity. We have one commercial hotel in Community Board 8, and we're going to close that, by or before December of this year."

Bray attended the meeting with a representative of the nonprofit Praxis Housing Initiatives to defend placement of a transitional homeless center in a newly built apartment building at 5731 Broadway. The move to eliminate scattered housing and instead centralize such housing in a single building is part of de Blasio's overall plan to deal with the city's homeless problem.

While it is possible that some of the families housed at Van Cortlandt Motel could move into the new apartment building, if such a deal is finalized with the developer, the focus would be working to return families with a last known address in Riverdale and Kingsbridge back to their original community.

"Right now, we have 359 people who are from CB8 who are being sheltered outside CB8 in our system," Bray said. "That includes over 80 families with children. And part of our plan is to offer those families the chance to be sheltered back to where they used to call home."

There are 28 families living at the motel right now, homeless services officials told The Riverdale Press last week. Although the organization moved out about 50 men in early 2016, they replaced them with families, creating an outcry from neighbors, accusing the city of lying to residents.

This time, however, it seemed most of the accusations of dishonesty were being levied against Stagg Group, the developer of 5731 Broadway. In fact, the board — acting as the land use committee — unanimously voted to refer past statements Stagg representatives made to the board to the city's Department of Investigation, which provides independent oversight of city agencies.

Stagg, which did not send a representative to Thursday's meeting, told CB8 officials a number of times that 5731 Broadway would be market-rate housing, according to land use committee chair Charles Moerdler. The board, Moerdler said, took Stagg at its word when supporting its application for a 421a tax abatement, which provides long-term tax breaks to developers who offer at least a portion of their units at affordable housing rates. 

Stagg representatives were asked multiple times during those presentations whether 5731 Broadway would turn into a facility to help the homeless, each time denying it, Moerdler said.

"It is my view that this matter should be referred to the Department of Investigations promptly," Moerdler said to some cheers from the more than 300 people who crowded into the multi-purpose room. "This board, by law, is a city agency. Any material misrepresentation of fact to a city agency from which a benefit is derived could be an appropriate subject for whatever action that DOI may think is appropriate, or any of the other appropriate law enforcement agencies." 

The Department of Investigation, according to its website, has the power to look into any "agency, officer, elected official or employee of the city, as well as those who do business with or receive benefits from the city."

At Thursday's meeting, the homeless services department said there was no finalized contract yet in place with Stagg or Praxis over turning 5731 Broadway into a transitional homeless facility, and that it would hold a public hearing in the near future before anything is finalized.

Van Cortlandt Motel, 5731 Broadway, Bill de Blasio, Jackie Bray, Charles Moerdler, Michael Hinman,

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