AAPCI makes retreat from North Riverdale

It’s not dignified. It does not serve to help the unhoused by shoving six to eight men in a room.”

ERIC DINOWITZ, councilman

City homeless services officials are pressing ahead with plans to build a new homeless shelter at 6661 Broadway in north Riverdale without African American Planning Commission, Inc.

The nonprofit shelter provider had been the agency’s key collaborator on the site. But AAPCI withdrew their proposal earlier this month, said an agency spokesperson.

A statement on AAPCI’s website said: “After careful consideration, AAPCI made the decision not to proceed with the 6661 Broadway project in order to focus its staff and resources on the existing shelter and supportive housing projects that the NYC Department of Homeless Services and the NYC Department of Housing, Preservation and Development have already engaged AAPCI to operate, and the thousands of New Yorkers that AAPCI already serves in those projects.”

The city social services spokesperson maintained the site will be operated by an experienced not-for-profit provider.

The spokesperson said the request for proposal process allows for reasonable changes to the proposal, which includes a potential switch in providers during the overall procurement process.

But local elected officials and Community Board 8 officers aren’t so sure.

In remarks last week at the Community Board 8’s December full board meeting, New York Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz said the agency will now have to “work twice as hard” to vet organizations seeking to take AAPCI’s place.

“They need to start the process from the beginning again, and not just substitute a name,” he said, then added, “It was a bad idea when they proposed it and it’s still a very bad idea.”

City councilman Eric Dinowitz also chimed in.

“This is something we’ve been continually working on since it came to our attention, and one of the key elements and key problems of this is the warehousing of humans,” he said. “It’s not dignified. It does not serve to help the unhoused by shoving six to eight men in a room.”

CB8 chair Laura Spalter said she and land use committee chair Charles Moerdler would discuss next steps in a phone call planned for last Thursday with Assemblyman Dinowitz, Councilman Dinowitz, and state Sen. Gustavo Rivera.

AAPCI selected the north Riverdale site and applied for a city contract to build and operate a new shelter more than a year ago as part of the agency’s open-ended procurement process.

The $211 million proposed contract for a single adult shelter in north Riverdale continued to be listed as “in progress” on the city’s public contract portal even as development of the property appeared to get underway this summer and fall.

Court Square Real Estate Partners filed permits in October for a new six-story men’s shelter with 28 dormitory-style rooms accommodating up to 140 people.

At the time, a social services spokesperson told The Riverdale Press, “the only result we accept is a finished product that is ready for occupancy, operated by a qualified not-for-profit provider-partner.”

Homeless services began soliciting bids for new congregate shelters under former mayor Bill de Blasio’s 2017 “Turning the Tide” plan, which set a goal of building 90 new shelters “from the ground up” by 2023 while also shutting down the city’s disreputable and often dangerous “cluster” sites.

Only 46 of the 90 new shelters had opened by late last year, deputy commissioner Erin Drinkwater said in a packed CB8 meeting. The agency has not responded to multiple requests from The Press for an update on the number of shelters they’ve opened now. But it has likely now ticked up to about 48, according to other recent news reports.

It’s unclear why AAPCI made a sudden about-face earlier this month.

AAPCI remains in good standing on their other homeless services contracts, the homeless services spokesperson said.

They also said AAPCI has been meeting benchmarks set out in a corrective action plan city officials embarked on with the provider following revelations of nepotism and unethical business practices that came to light in reporting by The New York Times.

The 25-year-old nonprofit headed by Matthew Okebiyi offers transitional and supportive housing, temporary shelter for victims of domestic violence, and emergency shelter in commercial hotels throughout the city. It has expanded rapidly over the past decade, bringing in $44.4 million in grants from city agencies in 2019 — the most recent tax filing available from the New York State charities bureau database. By comparison, AAPCI’s total funding from public grants in 2009 was $1.6 million.

Recent projects include a single adult shelter on Hoyt Street in Brooklyn, which was finalized this year, and Edwin’s Place, a development in Brownsville, with 88 supporting housing units and 37 affordable units. AAPCI is partnering with nonprofit developer Breaking Ground to build it.

AAPCI’s $211 million proposed contract for a single adult shelter in north Riverdale was still listed as “in progress” on the city’s public contract portal at press time.