Crocodile tears. And for God's sake, please don't encourage them to move to Greenwich
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Can’t we all get along?
Upper West Side residents say three hotels that are housing hundreds of homeless men during the coronavirus pandemic have turned the area into a spectacle of public urination, cat-calling and open drug use.
Among those staying at the luxury Belleclaire on Broadway and the Lucerne on W. 79th Street, and the more down-market Belnord on W. 87th Street, are people who are mentally ill, recovering from drug addictions, and registered sex offenders.
Ten sex offenders are staying in a single hotel — the Belleclaire, which is just one block from the playground of P.S. 87.
“It doesn’t feel safe anymore,” nanny Michele McDowall, 39, told The Post.
She said she was recently offered crack by a pair of homeless men as she wheeled a toddler along Riverside Park at 79th Street.
“You want to buy crack?” she said they shouted repeatedly as she hurried past, and as the frightened 2-year-old girl in the stroller put her hands over her ears and cried, “Too loud!”
“Listen, whatever drug you can imagine is done there,” Angel Ortiz, 60, told a Post reporter of his fellow residents outside the hotel.
“They shoot up, sniff up, crack, K2, everything,” agreed a fellow resident who gave his name as “B.K.”, and his age as 43.
“You got drunks — you got violent drunks,” another Lucerne resident, William, 45, told The Post — though he kept interrupting the interview to call out to passing women.
“What’s up momma? How you doing pretty girl? Yo’ fine self,” he shouted. “How you feel baby girl? Pretty girl.”
[Funny]: When his offer to sell K2 to the reporter was rebuffed, he noted, reasonably enough, “It’s not for everyone.”
Across the street, Mariano Ouatu, 49, runs a restaurant, Coppola’s, where drunken arguments among the homeless are driving away his customers.
“They go to the tables, they asking for money,” he said.
“Screaming, forget about it. It’s like a jungle. They get drunk and they start fighting,” he said.
If he tells a couple of them to move along, “Already there are 20 around you. … They are now on Broadway. Everywhere. Everywhere. Sitting on the bench. Drinking. There is a liquor store. You see them go in and out, in and out, in and out and buying those liquor bottles.”
He added, of the Lucerne, “Beautiful hotel, I can’t believe it”
The newstand run by Malik Faheem, 54, at 83rd and Broadway has been robbed three times, he said.
“Usually they steal petty things like candy,” he said, adding he is forced to take the loss to avoid a fight.
“They’re not very peaceful,” he told The Post, singling out one imposing, 6′ 3” homeless man who harasses small women, demanding, “Gimme 2 dollars, I’m going to breakfast.”
“It’s not a request. He pushes you, forces you, without touching. Especially ladies. They get scared. They give it to him right away.”
It’s the wild west, complained Upper West Side parent Mira Gross — who said she knows some 20 families who have moved out or are considering moving.
Broadway is now a “halfway house,” she said. “It’s not just people loitering. They’re either passed out or they’re menacing,” she said.
“People are saying we’ve moved back to the 1970s,” she said. “But the people who were here in the 1970s say it’s much worse than it was.”
Sympathy for the devils
City spokesman: “[We’re] helping people rebuild their lives and grow through second chances as they get back on their feet. New Yorkers experiencing homelessness are our neighbors – and the notion that they are not welcome in some neighborhoods for any reason is an affront to basic decency.
“We don’t discriminate based on people’s previous experiences or backgrounds, and we will not create gated communities within our City – we extend a helping hand, no matter what.
“Now more than ever, these services and supports, this empathy and humanity, are essential, across all communities, across the five boroughs – and our commitment to providing them to those in need must be unwavering.”
Look: these Upper West Siders all voted for this, albeit with the unspoken assumption that the chickens wouldn’t be allowed to roost in their neighborhoods, and come November they’ll vote for more of the same. If they come to Greenwich they’ll pack their ideology along with them — witness the Ladies of Greenwich Invisible — and vote for more of the same here. De Blasio has implemented Checkpoint Charlies on his hellholes’ borders to check for flu carriers; we should erect ideology checkpoints of our own.
