Carroll Gardens Residents Upset Over Plans For Homeless Shelter. Ugh. {ny}

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http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2012/10/carroll_gardens_1.php



Like most gentrified neighborhoods in New Brooklyn, Carroll Gardens looked completely different only a decade ago. There were no coffee shops or strollers on Smith Street and the brownstones were not obsessively recognized for their aesthetic charm just yet. It was a lower-income neighborhood on the brink of a migratory explosion.

So when the Bloomberg administration sent a letter last week to the residents of the quasi-bourgeoisie neighborhood about an incoming homeless shelter on West 9th and Court, the residents freaked. Almost immediately, shouts of the common "Not in my backyard!" reverberated from the community.

It's funny how that can work, huh? The recent transplants are frustrated that even more recent transplants are on the way. And this is strange because the neighborhood is no stranger to Department of Health programs: a housing complex for abused women and a clinic for heroin addicts already exists.

With the homeless population in New York drastically spiking in past months, City Hall has had to quickly open homeless shelters across the City, finding spots for the 47,000 or so living on the streets. And one of these locations happens to be in Carroll Gardens, where the administration seeks to open a facility, run by Aguila Incorporated, that can hold about 170 of the City's homeless.

[kestrel91316]

1. Better they are in a shelter with running water and toilets than wandering the streets,

sleeping in doorways, urinating and defecating in public, and scaring half the populace silly.

I wish WE had a homeless shelter here in the west end of the Valley. Heaven knows we have enough local homeless. Many of them have been around for years - and are wearing the same clothes they were 2 or 3 years ago. We've got the drunks and druggies, of course, but mostly we've got the mentally ill. Some are extremely deranged and one wonders how they even stay alive year after year.