As Homelessness Spikes in New York Metropolis, Eric Adams Is Making an attempt to Shut a Homeless Shelter

New York City—Squeezed between a five-star lodge and a Korean cultural middle in midtown Manhattan lies the Mainchance drop-in middle, a four-story constructing with a black-and-white tile exterior and a shiny orange awning with the phrase “COMMUNITY FOR ALL” printed in block letters.

To passersby, “Neighborhood for All” could appear to be solely a catchy phrase, however it’s a mantra at Mainchance, which has been working as a part of the nonprofit community Grand Central Neighborhood Social Service Company (GCNSSC) since 1989.

Brady Crain, Mainchance’s govt director, instructed me that calling it a “drop-in” is a little bit of a misnomer: “No person is dropping out and in.” Lots of Mainchance’s patrons are “regulars” who frequent the shelter for its day-to-day companies and month-to-month meals pantry.

Crain estimated that the middle serves meals to greater than 300 individuals a day. Together with internet hosting the month-to-month meals pantry, Mainchance gives showers, bus vouchers, banking companies, and medical care and referrals. It additionally helps join purchasers to detox facilities and church buildings with obtainable beds. The middle itself doesn’t have beds, although on the second flooring, there’s a “useful resource room” the place individuals can relaxation.

However New York Metropolis underneath Mayor Eric Adams needs to cancel the Division of Homeless Providers’ contract with Mainchance, shuttering the middle. On web page 25 of Adams’s 2025 fiscal funds draft, town labels Mainchance “underperforming” and says that closing it could save round $3.7 million over the subsequent two years.

However on June 28, simply two days earlier than town knowledgeable Mainchance that it needed the middle closed, the Division of Homeless Providers rated Mainchance “excellent” primarily based on a website inspection.

“The town retains giving us all these combined messages,” William Kornblum, the chairman of GCNSSC’s board of administrators, instructed me. “On one hand, they’re praising us and providing us a brand new contract for added work, whereas then again, they’re telling us now we have to shut.”

(The mayor’s workplace and the Division of Homeless Providers didn’t reply to requests for remark.)

As homelessness within the metropolis continues to rise, the work of Mainchance is more and more vital. In 2022, greater than 14 % of New Yorkers skilled meals insecurity, practically double the nationwide common. About 146,000 individuals entry shelters each month, in accordance with Metropolis Limits. The variety of homeless individuals in New York Metropolis is at its highest degree for the reason that Nice Melancholy, and the variety of homeless single adults is greater than double what it was only a decade in the past. The principle purpose for the spike in homelessness is the dearth of reasonably priced housing, with town shedding greater than 1 million reasonably priced housing models between 1996 and 2017.

Regardless of rising want, drop-in facilities like Mainchance stay few and much between. There are at the moment simply six such websites throughout New York Metropolis, with two in Manhattan.

Crain, who has been working at Mainchance since its transfer to thirty second Road in 2005, mentioned the group is keen to show the shelter right into a “safe-haven website”—that means it could present semi-private or non-public rooms with beds—if meaning hold the doorways open. The town, in accordance with Crain, is prioritizing putting individuals in beds, not offering different companies.

In February 2024, Mainchance submitted a Request for Proposal that might rework Mainchance into an in a single day shelter. And town rejected the concept. The Division of Homeless Providers instructed Mainchance that turning the shelter right into a secure haven “would probably be a number of years out.” However Mainchance’s lawyer, Marc Gross, mentioned town is assuming that the method of changing Mainchance into an in a single day shelter would take years, though a contractor estimated that it could actually simply take as much as 90 days. The conversion to a safe-haven shelter is “very simple,” Gross defined: All Mainchance must do is put beds the place there are at the moment chairs, set up sprinkler programs within the sleeping space, and construct one other bathe and extra exits.

Gross has been preventing with the Division of Homeless Providers to stop the shelter’s contract from ending. Mainchance filed a restraining order in opposition to town in June to delay town from closing it. Gross, a litigation lawyer and senior counsel for Pomerantz LLP, is on the board of Mainchance and is taking the case professional bono.

After submitting a preliminary injunction in opposition to the Division of Homeless Providers, there was a listening to on July 23 to current arguments in entrance of a decide. Gross instructed me the contract between the Division of Homeless Providers and Mainchance can’t be terminated and not using a legitimate purpose. Mainchance is now ready for Decide Lynn Kotler’s ruling. If she accepts the validity of Mainchance’s argument, then the case will head to trial. That call is anticipated to return in September.

The struggle to maintain Mainchance open is about serving to the poor and homeless in the neighborhood, Kornblum instructed me. “The immediacy of the care that we are able to provide and the placement within the human ecology of central Midtown Manhattan is essential,” he mentioned. “For those who lose that, you lose one thing crucial for the populations that we serve.”

In the course of the month-to-month meals pantries, individuals usually stand in line for hours to gather the fruit, the freshly cooked meat, and canned fish and greens ready for them inside. Although the August pantry was scheduled to begin at 2 pm, the “lunch rush” started at 1 with the primary few individuals taking their place throughout the road, ready for Crain and different Mainchance staffers to usher them inside. As soon as inside, prospects are requested to register and take a quantity, which they may then wait to listen to introduced earlier than making their approach all the way down to the rows of tables lined with meals. Staffers assist the shoppers pick groceries and pack them into their carts, the place they’re then helped to the exit.

Dorothy Simon, an 80-year-old who lives a number of blocks from Mainchance, was among the many first individuals ready for the doorways to open. She’s used a wheelchair for the previous seven years after struggling a spinal-cord damage at a development website. It isn’t simple for her to get across the neighborhood even on the sidewalks, she mentioned, and so having a dependable place to go for groceries is important.

If the shelter have been to shut, she instructed me, “I received’t have the ability to get sure meals as a result of I’m not going to have the ability to afford to purchase among the stuff that you could get right here.”

The pantry doesn’t simply assist the people who choose up the meals. “This place provides me greater than another place,” Gary, one of many meals drive’s most frequent patrons mentioned. “You get meat, you get protein right here. I get salmon in a can.” Gary, who requested that his final identify not be used, is a 74-year-old Vietnam Battle veteran and former nurse’s aide who makes use of the meals pantry as a chance to gather meals for his neighbors in addition to himself.

“On SNAP I solely get $4 a month. My Social Safety is just $840 a month. And on my flooring, I obtained 5 bed-bound guys I assist out. And I get their meals for them. With out it, they starve,” he mentioned.

Kristen Hodge, 44, mentioned she was apprehensive about shedding the neighborhood she’s constructed at Mainchance. Hodge mentioned her 3-year-old daughter, Liberty, particularly enjoys the contemporary fruit and interacting with everybody.

“They have been extra welcoming than different locations,” Hodge mentioned. “Right here you get good dialog, good firm, the individuals are good. They really get to know you.”

For the patrons and employees at Mainchance, the potential of closure weighs on them. Crain famous that they’re making an attempt to take issues sooner or later at a time, however for now, Mainchance stays in limbo till the decide’s resolution. And if the shelter have been to shut, he mentioned town would lose greater than only a bodily house for town’s homeless: “We do stuff that may’t be measured. We create relationships. We join with our prospects.”