New York
A Shelter’s Closing Is a Turning Point for Homeless Policy
Good morning. It’s Tuesday. Today we’ll get a look inside an intake center for homeless men that the city plans to close. We’ll also find out why the Rikers Island jail complex has video games for people incarcerated there.
A city shelter near Bellevue Hospital is closing. The homeless men who were staying there have already been transferred to other shelters. Inside the building, on 30th Street, is an intake center where people go to be assigned to a bed elsewhere.
The city’s plan is to move the intake center to a building in the East Village that has been serving as a shelter for homeless men with substance abuse problems. Neighbors there are fighting the move. Last week a judge temporarily blocked the plan.
When the city announced the closing of the 30th Street shelter, it said the building was in a “severe state of disrepair.” My colleague Elizabeth A. Harris, who covers homelessness for the Metro desk, got a look inside the building. I asked her about what she saw — and what closing it would mean for the city’s shelter system.
The 30th Street shelter has served as the front door to the city’s shelter system for adult men for more than 40 years. Can the system handle the change?
We’ll see. The intake center at 30th Street is still there while the lawsuit plays out, but when it does move — wherever the new location is — it’s going to be a big shift. The 30th Street shelter was there for so long; it was very well known. Men knew it was the first stop if they needed a bed. Getting the word out to people who are homeless can be difficult, so it’s going to take time for people to be aware of the change.
The city has said it will keep a presence at 30th Street for at least a year so that when people inevitably come in looking for help, they can be sent to the new intake center.
The city says the 30th Street building is unsafe and has been unacceptable for years. Is it? What did you see?
There are parts of the building that the city is still using or used until recently. Those sections feel institutional, reminiscent of the locked psychiatric wards the building was built to have.
There are other parts of the building that have been off limits to the public for years. Those feel as if they’ve been left to rot. I saw the solarium, where psychiatric patients would have gone to get sunlight years ago. Huge chunks of the ceiling are missing. It looked as if someone had shredded the walls with a crowbar.
In the basement, there were places where the ceiling was visibly sagging, and beams that looked visibly rotted.
I was never worried that anything was going to fall on me. The city has said there’s no immediate danger in the building, and it has taken steps to shore it up, like putting temporary metal support structures in areas where support beams have corroded and netting over the Juliet balconies and the cornices so pieces don’t fall.
Closing the 30th Street shelter seems to symbolize the direction the Mamdani administration wants to take. How so?
The Mamdani administration wants to move away from big shelters. The Bellevue shelter is this huge institutional place that has had a reputation for being dangerous for a long time. Theft has been a problem. Violence has been a problem. Open drug use has been a problem. It’s a place that people don’t want to go, even if they have nowhere else to turn. Some people would rather sleep on the street than go there.
The idea is to have smaller shelters that people would actually be willing to go to. But it has been hard to close 30th Street for a couple of reasons. One is that it’s big. It has the capacity for 850 beds.
Another reason is location. It’s in the heart of Manhattan. It’s hard to find another centrally located place in Manhattan to have an intake shelter. So 30th Street was problematic for a long time, but it was hard to figure out what a better option would be.
What happens to the building if the plan to move the intake center goes through?
The Mamdani administration hasn’t said yet, but an engineering report commissioned by the city said the building was too far gone and should just be torn down.
Weather
Increasing clouds are expected today with a high near 65. Tonight, expect mostly cloudy skies and temperatures in the low 50s.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until May 14 (Solemnity of the Ascension).
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“No one will ever compare to Michael Jackson.” — Grace Acosta, who wore a red “Thriller” jacket and matching pants to a Manhattan theater to see “Michael,” a biopic about Michael Jackson that critics have savaged but that crushed box-office records over the weekend.
The latest New York news
To reduce violence, Rikers lets inmates play video games
Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 is too violent. But people incarcerated at Rikers Island can play Mortal Kombat. Rikers bought 33 copies of the latest edition in 2024.
The notorious jail complex uses video games as part of a strategy to reduce violence among inmates. And some inmates find mental freedom playing games like Daymare: 1998.
“The environment is very hostile at times,” said Talik Thomas, 22, who was held at Rikers for eight months on gun charges. “It’s a good way to offset the hostility, so I know I’m still me. I don’t always have to be on edge.”
They play offline, on PlayStations, because the internet is not freely available at Rikers. A majority of its 49 housing units have PlayStation 4 consoles, and the Department of Correction bought 20 PlayStation 5 consoles in 2024. The newer units are kept in a center that inmates from each housing unit can visit a few times a month. The controllers are kept in a locked case — a corrections officer must take the units out and unlock them to insert the discs.
In 2024 the department bought hundreds of copies of games like NBA 2K24, Marvel’s Midnight Suns and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart. Last year it bought the latest editions of sports franchises like Madden NFL, as well as God of War and Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order.
Jessica Medard, the executive director for facility programming at the Department of Correction, said the games available at Rikers do not include realistic violence. So, no Call of Duty: Black Ops 7.
METROPOLITAN diary
Lock talk
Dear Diary:
I had just finished my workout at the Dodge Y.M.C.A. on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn and couldn’t remember which locker I had put my stuff in.
A guy who looked to be, like me, in his 60s, noticed me going from row to row futilely trying my combination on every black Master Lock.
“You forgot which locker?” he said. “I have a system for that.”
I said I had a system for remembering my lock’s combination, but not the locker number.
He asked how I remembered the combination.
“I take each number and think about which Yankee had that number when I was a kid,” I explained.
His eyes brightened.
“I do the same with old Mets players!” he exclaimed.
I laughed.
“Well,” I said, “we’ve got nothing else to talk about, then.”
He asked which Yankees.
He’s a Mets fan, I thought to myself. What harm would it do?
“Roy White, Lou Piniella and Sparky Lyle,” I said, lowering my voice to a murmur.
He didn’t hesitate.
“Six, 14, 28!” he exclaimed.
There were chuckles all around.
“Time to get a new lock,” I heard someone say.
— Tom Guiltinan
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
A man was sentenced to 115 years in prison on Monday for the fatal shooting of a New York City police officer who had ordered him to step out of a car in Queens in 2024.
More than 200 people, mostly police officers, packed a courtroom in State Supreme Court in Queens to hear Justice Michael Aloise sentence Guy Rivera in the killing of Jonathan Diller, 31, who was promoted to the rank of detective after his death.
“It took me five minutes to calculate these numbers,” Justice Aloise said. “It’s going to take you a lifetime to calculate the damage you did and the grief that you caused.”
He said that Mr. Rivera had determined his own fate “the second you pulled that trigger.”
Detective Diller’s wife, Stephanie, who sat among the officers in the courtroom, read a statement in court just before the sentencing, speaking of the pain and loss that she and her son, Ryan, now 3, have suffered. Ms. Diller, who testified during the trial, spoke directly to Mr. Rivera as he sat at the defense table.
“This is the last moment I will allow you to take from me,” she said as tears rolled down her cheeks. “You took my husband, Jonathan. You took the future we planned together. The life we were building, the years we were supposed to share together.”
“What you did to Jonathan” she said, “gave me and our son a life sentence without him.”
A jury found Mr. Rivera, 36, guilty earlier this month on four charges, including aggravated manslaughter, in Detective Diller’s death, but acquitted him of the most serious charge, first-degree murder. The decision, after a three-week trial in Queens, stunned the dozens of police officers present when it was announced in the courtroom on April 1.
To find him guilty of murder, the jury had to decide whether they believed Mr. Rivera had intended to kill Detective Diller when he pointed his gun at him in the Far Rockaway section of Queens on March 25, 2024. They ultimately determined that Mr. Rivera had intentionally pulled the trigger, but did not intend to kill him.
Mr. Rivera did not speak at his sentencing at the advice of one of his lawyers, Jamal Johnson, who told Justice Aloise they would appeal the conviction.
Mr. Johnson, a lawyer with the Legal Aid Society, said after the hearing that Justice Aloise’s statement at sentencing showed the court “had already made up its mind about sentencing well before the trial was conducted.”
During the trial, prosecutors said that before the fatal shooting, Detective Diller’s partner, Sgt. Sasha Rosen, saw Mr. Rivera and another man, Lindy Jones, come out of a store and get into a car. Mr. Rivera had an L-shaped object in the pocket of his sweatshirt that resembled a firearm, prosecutors said.
Detective Diller approached the vehicle and asked Mr. Rivera repeatedly to comply with orders. When he did not, Sergeant Rosen reached in to pull him out of the car.
Then Mr. Rivera fired, the jury found. The defense argued that Mr. Rivera’s gun went off accidentally when Sergeant Rosen pulled him out, striking Detective Diller. Prosecutors said Mr. Rivera then turned his gun on Sergeant Rosen, but the weapon jammed.
Justice Aloise did not allow the jury to see video that, the defense contended, showed Mr. Rivera’s arm was broken during his confrontation with the police.
That evidence would have directly undermined the prosecution’s contention that Mr. Rivera was physically able to pull the trigger when he tried to shoot Sergeant Rosen, they said.
In all, Mr. Rivera was sentenced to 25 years to life for the aggravated manslaughter conviction; 40 years to life for the attempted murder of Sergeant Rosen; and 25 years to life for each of the gun possession counts. He was ordered to serve those sentences consecutively.
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On Monday, after the sentencing, dozens of police officers smiled and embraced one another as they left the courtroom. The prosecutors who tried the case and Melinda Katz, the Queens district attorney, hugged several of Detective Diller’s family members.
Jessica Tisch, the police commissioner, called the sentence “obviously the right result, for him and for anyone who kills a New York City police officer.”
Outside the courthouse, members of the Police Benevolent Association, the police officers’ union, said they were pleased with the sentence.
“The verdict in this case did not send the right message to the Diller family and every police officer who wears the uniform,” said Patrick Hendry, the union president, who spoke at the foot of the courthouse stairwell, backed by nearly 100 police officers.
“But this sentence,” he said, “it sent the right message.”
How can people possibly afford to live in one of the most expensive cities on the planet? It’s a question New Yorkers hear a lot, often delivered with a mix of awe, pity and confusion.
We surveyed hundreds of New Yorkers about how they spend, splurge and save. We found that many people — rich, poor or somewhere in between — live life as a series of small calculations that add up to one big question: What makes living in New York worth it?
By the time their son was diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum when he was 18 months old, Angela Donadelle and her child’s father, Michael Jones, were no longer together.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, at the height of the crack epidemic, the pair had fallen into drug addiction. They both went into recovery after they discovered Ms. Donadelle was pregnant.
“He saved my life,” Ms. Donadelle, 66, said of her son. “My life wasn’t in order, and then God sent me him and changed everything.”
Together, Ms. Donadelle and Mr. Jones forged what would become a three decade commitment to carefully and jointly parenting their son, Christopher Jones, now 32, so that he could be independent when they were gone. Ms. Donadelle, who grew up in Harlem, considered moving to find more affordable housing, but believed that Christopher, who is highly functioning, would have access to better therapeutic and educational services in New York City.
Randi Levine, the policy director for Advocates for Children of New York, said New York has high quality programs for autistic children. Medicaid also pays for more services for children and families here than in other states, said Brigit Hurley, the chief program officer for The Children’s Agenda. Both agree that access to services can sometimes be limited.
“I could have taken my degree and moved down south and made more money,” said Ms. Donadelle, who graduated from Boston College with a degree in marketing and business management. She now works as a housing organizer at Good Old Lower East Side, a housing preservation organization in Lower Manhattan. “I had friends that moved to other places, but would I be able to accommodate the needs of Christopher?”
Staying in New York City meant that she had to come up with a plan. Even though they were no longer romantically involved, Mr. Jones sometimes lived with Ms. Donadelle and their son at the Lakeview Apartments, a four-building, 446-unit complex in a prime location at East 107th Street and Fifth Avenue in East Harlem.
From her terrace on one of the building’s highest floors, Ms. Donadelle has a view of the Empire State Building and Central Park, including the Conservatory Garden and reservoir. She pays $1,950 per month for her 750-square-foot two-bedroom apartment.
“I knew that if I was short on the rent, I could ask him for money, and he would give it to me,” Ms. Donadelle said of Mr. Jones, adding that they split the $250 per month they spent on food and the $350 per month for cable, internet and phone service.
“We were real good friends,” she said. “He had girlfriends and I had boyfriends. They just never came to our house.”
The End of a Partnership
That help ended in January 2024 when Mr. Jones, a security guard at a building for older adults, died of a heart attack. Pictures of Mr. Jones, who was known for his love of fashion, adorn the apartment.
Ms. Donadelle tears up when talking about Mr. Jones and their joint effort to raise their son. “We were a team,” she said. “If I was at work, he took care of Chris, got him to the therapies. And that’s why it got harder when he died.”
But their plan paid off. Years ago, specialists told Ms. Donadelle that Christopher would not be capable of graduating high school. He went on to graduate high school with honors and then earned an associate degree from Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn with honors before completing his bachelor’s degree at Hunter College in Manhattan.
Christopher works part-time as a package handler for FedEx where he earns $24,000 per year. Ms. Donadelle earns $60,000 per year from her job as a housing organizer and about $5,000 per year from teaching a course about the social determinants of health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
A few years ago, the Lakeview Apartments converted from the 1970s era Mitchell-Llama affordability program to Project-Based Rental Assistance, meaning that residents would still be allowed to continue paying 30 percent of their income for rent. Ms. Donadelle and her son qualify for a small discount because of his diagnosis and her age, but her rent increased by $400 after the conversion when the market rate value of her apartment and her income went up.
At the time, there was a fear that the complex would become market rate housing because of its desirable location. Ms. Donadelle, who first moved to the building with her family when she was 17, helped in the fight to keep the building affordable. She has pictures with local politicians who joined in the effort.
“Some people don’t think we deserve this view,” she said. “But we have a community here. Everybody knows us, everybody knows Chris.”
Bulk Buys for Home Cooking
Money, Ms. Donadelle said, can sometimes be tight, but she considers herself to be both resourceful and frugal. She cooks at home to save money. Some of her specialties are jerk chicken, lasagna, oxtails and peas and rice. The $40 she spends at the butcher on a batch of oxtails, once considered a cheap cut of meat that has now become expensive, is a treat for them.
Ms. Donadelle buys in bulk and shrink wraps cuts of meat to store in her freezer. Bins in the corner of the terrace hold toilet paper and other supplies bought in bulk to save money.
She also comparison shops, sometimes driving with friends to stores where the cost of fresh fruits and vegetables is cheaper than in her neighborhood. A food pantry that she helped connect with her building also provides about $50 per month worth of food.
Ms. Donadelle and Christopher share a family cellphone plan with a relative and pay about $150 per month. She recently gave up smoking for Lent, which was costing at least $120 per month, and plans not to return to smoking. Christopher saves $200 per month for an emergency fund. Transportation costs them about $60 per month and they budget about $80 per month for lunch at work.
The Rewards of City Life
For fun, they enjoy walks in Central Park with their dog, Milo, who originally belonged to Mr. Jones. They spend about $800 a year on shots, grooming and supplies. They spend about $125 per month eating out and going to the movies. Ms. Donadelle’s Spotify subscription costs $20 per month.
As she looks back on her decision to fight for her home, Ms. Donadelle has no regrets. Her son’s success, she believes, is linked to her decision to find a way to stay in the city.
Christopher is an artist whose sketchbooks dot the apartment. Every Friday, Christopher attends his social group at YAI, which provides services for people with developmental disabilities. He has even begun doing some speaking engagements about normalizing people with disabilities.
“I was literally raised here,” Christopher said while admiring the view from his terrace. “This building, like this city, is my home. It’s been good to me.”
We are talking to New Yorkers about how they spend, splurge and save.
Before Jesse Tyler Ferguson starred on “Modern Family,” he was a bartender at the Winter Garden Theater in Midtown Manhattan, when “Cats” was in performances there. It was 1995, and he had come to New York from Albuquerque. He was cast in the Off Broadway production of “On the Town,” which later moved to Broadway.
“These professional dancers and singers in ‘Cats’ were auditioning for the same role as me, and I got it,” he said. “It’s like my Shirley MacLaine story.”
After starring in the original Broadway production of “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,” Mr. Ferguson was cast as the uptight lawyer Mitchell Pritchett on the ABC sitcom. After the show ended in 2020, he won a Tony Award for “Take Me Out.”
Now he is starring as Truman Capote in the play “Tru.” He recently spent his day off with The New York Times.
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