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Mamdani administration faces backlash over 2 new Brooklyn hotel homeless shelters
By
Karen Yi
Published May 25, 2026
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Aristide Economopoulos for Gothamist
By
Karen Yi
Published May 25, 2026
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The Mamdani administration is facing some pushback from Brooklyn residents over its plans to open two temporary homeless shelters inside hotels in Brooklyn.
The hotel shelters, which will open in Crown Heights and Flatbush, are the latest consequence from the city’s sudden closure of the massive men’s shelter known as Bellevue. City officials said the 850-bed shelter, which spans a whole city block, needed to close because of severe disrepair. Whole sections of the building had already been cordoned off for safety concerns. The Mamdani administration said it wants to build more welcoming spaces for homeless New Yorkers. Doing so will help convince people living on the street to come inside and exit shelter quicker, city officials said.
But as the city moves to replace Bellevue’s shelter beds, it’s running into stiff neighborhood opposition — including an ongoing lawsuit that’s forced the city to pause part of its plan.
At a community board meeting in Crown Heights earlier this month, residents denounced the city’s plan to establish a hotel shelter in a community that already has other shelters. They asked city officials why other neighborhoods that don’t have any shelters weren’t being forced to share the burden.
“ We understand that housing instability is a citywide issue that requires compassion, resources, and coordinated action. But compassion cannot come at the expense of equity, transparency, or meaningful community planning,” Councilmember Rita Joseph said at the meeting.
“These concerns are real. They cannot simply be dismissed as opposition to shelter themselves,” she added.
Nicholas Jacobelli, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeless Services, said the city needed locations “that could be quickly brought online to address the reduction in shelter capacity for single adult men.”
The hotel in Flatbush along Flatbush Avenue will serve 130 men, and the Ramada in Crown Heights will open for 110 men, starting in the summer, city officials said. Both hotel shelters will be run by the nonprofit provider Project Renewal.
The Department of Homeless Services said the city’s right-to-shelter law, which requires the city to provide a bed to anyone who asks, means it has to make more room in the system to replace the Bellevue beds.
”Until we have enough affordable housing for everyone who needs it, people have to be somewhere. And protesting a solution that gets people off the streets just makes no sense rationally or humanely,” said Dave Giffen, executive director of the Coalition for the Homeless.
The community districts in Crown Heights and Flatbush have other shelters but are not among the areas with the highest rate of shelter beds per capita, according to a 2023 city comptroller report. Neighborhoods like Bay Ridge, Bensonhurst and Dyker Heights don’t have any shelter beds, the report found.
Jacobelli said DHS and Project Renewal are continuing to engage both communities and will create a local advisory board to make sure public concerns are addressed.
City officials said the hotels will be emptied once new shelter sites for single men open across the city. Hotel shelters are more expensive than traditional shelters and the city says it wants to eventually stop relying on them. On average, it costs $156 per night to house a single person in a hotel, versus $145.13 a night in a traditional shelter, according to data from DHS and the city comptroller.
Giffen said while hotel shelters are not ideal, the city needs to make up the capacity lost in the domino effect of Bellevue’s closure.
Bellevue also functioned as an intake center for single men and families without dependent children. The city planned to relocate adult family intake to a shelter on 333 Bowery and men’s intake to a shelter on 8 East Third St.
To do that, the city had to transfer the men in the East Village shelters to other locations in Brooklyn. The beds will instead be used as so-called assessment beds for very short stays before more permanent placements are found. Giffen said more than 200 beds were substance abuse beds that came with additional services — and those aren’t being replaced.
The city is also facing legal opposition by a group of East Village residents who sued to stop the city from transferring intake services to a shelter downtown. Residents argued the move was not given adequate public notice or subjected to the necessary reviews.
A judge ordered the city to pause its relocation of men’s intake services that was supposed to happen in May.
City officials are appealing that decision.
Tagged
Politics
brooklyn
economy
homelessness
housing
manhattan
Karen Yi
Karen Yi covers homelessness and poverty. She joined the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom in 2020. Before that, Karen covered Newark for the Star-Ledger and spent almost a decade working for newspapers in New Jersey and Florida. She grew up in Miami and has a dog named Cashew. Got a tip? Email [email protected] or Signal 917-589-1460.
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