Don't let the homeless in

To the editor:

We are desperately seeking your assistance in publicizing and fighting a situation that is occurring in Kingsbridge in the Bronx. This is a thriving up-and-coming family neighborhood. New malls and businesses have been built and planned for this area, mostly on Broadway from West 230th Street to Van Cortlandt Park.

Added to this neighborhood revitalization was a new market-rate apartment building with 20 percent affordable units recently built at 5731 Broadway by developer Stagg Group. However, we have just learned that this new apartment building is actually meant to be a transitional homeless shelter housing chronically homeless addicts and ex-convicts.

Please note that the Stagg Group repeatedly lied about their intentions for the newly constructed building in order to secure a 421a tax abatement. 

Please also note that former Bronx borough president Adolfo Carrion is named as a paid consultant of Stagg Group, who helped broker this deal with the city’s homeless services department and Praxis Housing Initiatives, the agency set to run the facility.

We welcome any assistance you can give us in this matter. The bait-and-switch is apparently two-fold: What was originally touted as a market-rate apartment building is now being described as transitional housing for homeless families with children under 18. But in reality, it seems to be a transitional homeless shelter for addicts and ex-cons.

Those intended to be housed in the facility are set to move in this month.

This entire undertaking was deliberately engineered in such a way as to rob the community of any input. By the time we learned what was happening, it was almost a done deal.

Almost.

With your help, we hope to expose the underhanded actions of all parties involved, and put a stop to this plan of bringing homeless shelters into our neighborhood, which would destroy our way of life.

There is a public hearing scheduled for Thursday, Aug. 17, at 10 a.m., a 1 Centre St., Mezzanine, in Manhattan, regarding 5731 Broadway.

Angela M. Pless