The Mamdani administration has already spent $1.3 million on its controversial planned new homeless shelter in the East Village — as fed-up locals desperately try to stop it from opening, a dramatic Thursday court hearing revealed.
Furious and mostly grey-haired East Village neighbors packed a Manhattan courtroom to hear arguments over the proposed 117-bed intake center for men on East Third Street, replacing the infamous and now-shuttered Bellevue homeless shelter.
The locals’ attorney, Randy Mastro, argued Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration short-circuited the process to ram the new shelter into the neighborhood — and even allegedly intervened to squash a stop-work order back in April.
“By fiat, City Hall has decided that we’re going to move all adult male intake for the shelter system to one location in the East Village on a narrow street, heavily residential, [and] follow none of legal requirements to get there,” Mastro said in Manhattan Supreme Court.
“It’s really an outrage.”
The group of residents said they were blindsided by Mamdani’s March announcement that hundreds of homeless men would be relocated to their neighborhood after the closure of the notorious Bellevue shelter on 30th Street.
The neighbors — known as VOICE, for Village Organization for the Integrity of Community Engagement — took their case to Manhattan civil court, where Judge Sabrina Kraus issued an order delaying the center’s opening while the case plays out, leading to Thursday’s hearing.
Mastro told Kraus that massive spending on the new intake center on East Third Street has already taken place, citing records produced by the city.
“The supposedly minor renovations have already cost the city $1.3 million,” he said. “This is anything but minor. This is a major capital project… a major change in use with enormous impacts on the community.”
The city’s homeless agency also intervened to block a stop-work order from the Buildings Department, Mastro claimed, citing an email filed with the court.
City attorneys argued that the new facility didn’t require a lengthy public review process because the building at 8 East Third St. was once a notoriously horrid homeless men’s intake center in the 1980s and is currently a non-profit run shelter.
Kraus appeared skeptical, mainly due to the city’s own admission that more security would be needed — including the construction of an outdoor security booth.
“You’re putting the extra security because the change from what’s happening now to what’s going to happen in the future requires more security because there’s a greater danger,” said Kraus.
The judge dismissed a lawsuit attempting to block a new Upper East Side homeless women’s shelter on Wednesday, and drew a distinction between the two cases.
“That was a not-in-our-backyard kind of case,” Kraus said Thursday, “this is not that.”
One resident, the Rev. Keith Gadson, thought the administration “came up with a lot of subterfuge” after Mamdani declared an emergency to shutter Bellevue, the largest homeless men’s shelter in the city.
“It should be illegal,” said another resident. “They’re trying to open it two blocks from a school.”
Mastro served as first deputy mayor under Mamdani’s predecessor Eric Adams.
