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.
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What if the city …
Added More Metered Spots in Busy Neighborhoods
Less than 3 percent of parking spaces on New York City streets have paid meters. That’s only about 80,000 spots.
Most of the meters that do exist are along busy corridors, with higher hourly rates in the core of Manhattan.
Where are NYC’s parking meters?
The placement of meters often feels arbitrary. Much of the East Village, a busy Manhattan neighborhood, has no meters. Nostrand Avenue, a major artery in Brooklyn, has meters over most of a five-mile stretch, but they end abruptly north of Fulton Street.
A busy commercial corridor in Bedford-Stuyvesant lacks meters
Adding more meters in busy neighborhoods could improve turnover for spots, research suggests, and raise revenue for the city.
Seeking alternatives to avoid paying for meters overnight, car owners may choose to move to garages — which can cost $500 per month or more, depending on the neighborhood — park farther afield, or sell their cars. They could also turn to car-share programs, which set aside parking for shared vehicles.
When the city tries to add meters, there is often fierce opposition from neighbors, including on the Upper West Side of Manhattan last year, where residents revolted, the local City Council member complained people had been “blindsided” and the city backed down.
Critics argue that those pushing for reforms “hate people who own cars,” in the words of Vickie Paladino, a City Council member who represents a district in Queens that is home to many car owners.
How realistic is this? The city can add additional meters on its own without needing permission from state lawmakers in Albany. Dean Fuleihan, Mr. Mamdani’s first deputy mayor, gave supporters hope when he said in March that he was open to the idea.
How much could it raise? Parking meters currently generate $278 million in revenue per year. Adding meters to one-fourth of the city’s existing free parking spaces, for example, could produce at least $1.2 billion annually, according to the Center for an Urban Future.
What if the city …
Introduced Residential Parking Permits
Most parking on residential streets is open to all drivers, not just those who live nearby. But many other major U.S. cities, including Los Angeles and Chicago, have permits to reserve street parking for neighborhood residents.
Residential parking permits in New York could cost anywhere from $100 per year to far more than that, experts say, with higher rates potentially prodding some residents to give up their cars. Some spots could be set aside for visitors.
But permits would not necessarily solve the problem of the demand for parking outpacing the supply. And some transit groups oppose the idea, arguing that there are better ways to use the street space and that parking should not be guaranteed.
Rachel Weinberger, a vice president at the Regional Plan Association, an urban planning think tank, said that permits alone would not make parking easier. She also argued they would have to be prohibitively expensive in order to deter ownership.
“A permit would only be a hunting license, meaning that you’re allowed to look for a space,” she said. “It should mean you’re guaranteed a space.”
How much do cities charge for residential parking permits?
Boston
No fee
Chicago
$30
Los Angeles
$34
Washington, D.C.
$55*
Philadelphia
$75
Berkeley, Calif.
$85
San Francisco
$215
Experts say that permits could also be paired with an incentive for drivers: fewer alternate side-parking days for street sweeping. Most drivers are required to move their cars once or twice a week so the streets can be cleaned, and some choose instead to leave them in place and eat the costs of the $65 tickets they receive. Moving to monthly street sweeping could make the prospect of buying a permit more appealing.
How realistic is this? Residential permits would need to be approved by state lawmakers. Momentum for the idea grew after congestion pricing began in Manhattan, over concerns that drivers from outside the city would park outside the zone and take the subway in. It has support from Mark Levine, the city comptroller, and Carmen De La Rosa, a City Council member in northern Manhattan.
How much could it raise? If a permit cost $100 per year and was required in two-thirds of the city, that could raise roughly $200 million per year, minus administrative costs, according to Terrance J. Regan, an adjunct professor at Boston University who focuses on transportation policy. The city’s Independent Budget Office recommended starting with a smaller pilot program that would raise $6 million annually by the third year.
What if the city …
Ended Free Parking and Implemented Dynamic Pricing
Some urban planners want to phase out free parking altogether.
Transportation Alternatives, a street safety group, has pushed for eliminating free parking and argued that the city would benefit if fewer car trips were made.
“If you look around the world, there are many other transit-oriented cities that are safer, more efficient and healthier,” said Ben Furnas, the group’s executive director.
The city could reclaim many miles of streets, which proponents argue could be better used for public spaces, bus lanes, bike lanes, outdoor dining setups and trash containers.
Paid parking spaces could use dynamic pricing, a system where the cost of a spot varies by demand. Right now, parking rates are as low as $1.50 for the first hour.
Critics of such pricing models have argued that higher street-parking costs could hurt lower-income drivers or local businesses that rely on drivers. In 2019, Hoboken, N.J., announced a version of dynamic pricing on high-demand blocks, but the mayor and City Council repealed the plan after some resident opposition.
But the idea has worked elsewhere. In 2018, after a successful pilot, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency implemented demand-based pricing for the 10 percent of the city’s parking spots that are paid spaces, roughly 27,000 in all.
An evaluation of the pilot found that drivers spent 43 percent less time searching for a parking space, which in turn helped reduce car-based pollution. And once parking became easier, sales revenue increased for nearby businesses.
The rates in San Francisco can vary by block, time of day, or day of the week. Meters on the busiest blocks cost $11.75 an hour. The agency regularly reviews parking meter data and occupancy rates and decides whether to raise or lower rates.
Charles Komanoff, an economist and traffic modeler who helped create New York’s congestion pricing program, said dynamic pricing for parking could do even more than the tolls did to improve the flow of traffic here.
“I can’t imagine anything better,” he said.
How realistic is this? The Transportation Department could implement dynamic pricing, but a legislative push would most likely hasten change. Nantasha M. Williams, a City Council member representing Southeast Queens, has proposed a bill that would require a dynamic pricing pilot program in each borough. Eliminating all free parking would be a far more dramatic proposal, though supporters say it could be done in phases over several years.
How much could it raise? Parking reformists said the city could potentially raise billions of dollars a year under a dynamic parking system — money that could be reinvested into the neighborhoods where the fees are collected.
What if the city …
Cracked Down on Rule-Breakers
None of these plans work unless drivers obey the rules.
The city last year issued more than 11.6 million violations for parking and related offenses, according to a report by the Department of Finance, including for failing to move for street sweepers (1.8 million), not displaying a parking receipt (1.2 million), blocking a fire hydrant (674,000) and obstructing a bus stop (565,000).
In 1996, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani moved the city’s traffic enforcement agents, the unarmed civilians who write tickets for parking and other traffic violations, from the Transportation Department to the Police Department.
Some parking reformers say the shift weakened enforcement efforts, in part because the police have not focused on some of the most flagrant traffic violations.
They say that either the police should start issuing more tickets and collecting more fines, or they should allow the Transportation Department to once again take charge.
Some point to what they view as the city’s lackluster response to placard abuse, the practice of using either official permits issued by city agencies, or fraudulent ones, to park in unauthorized spots.
More than 91,000 complaints have been filed with the city since 2020 about possible placard abuse, but the police took action to fix the problem in just 21 percent of cases, according to a Times review of public data. Only about 12 percent of the complaints led to a driver being issued a summons.
“If you’re just unclogging these streets to have them filled with cars with fake placards, you’re not helping anything,” said Nicole Gelinas, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank.
There has also been a surge in fake, often out-of-state license plates that have made traffic violations harder to track. A perceived lack of consequences worsens the problem, said Jon Orcutt, a former policy director at the city’s Transportation Department.
“The culture has gotten terribly bad,” Mr. Orcutt said about enforcement efforts.
A spokesperson for the Police Department said in a statement that there was “deep collaboration” with the Transportation Department on traffic enforcement, and pointed to some recent initiatives, including issuing 247,000 summonses last year for “ghost vehicles” with fake plates.
Samuel I. Schwartz, the chair of the transportation research program at Hunter College, was New York City’s traffic commissioner under Mayor Edward I. Koch, at a time when the Transportation Department still controlled enforcement.
He said he thought it would be possible to change the behavior of repeat offenders if that agency led the effort and had the support of the police.
“I would go out in the field with an army of tow trucks,” Mr. Schwartz said.
How realistic is this? Mr. Mamdani could restore traffic enforcement powers to the Transportation Department, or instruct the Police Department to step up enforcement.
How much could it raise? The city issued $1.1 billion worth of parking tickets and camera violations in fiscal year 2025, according to the Finance Department, but just $946 million, or 84 percent, was ultimately collected. By ramping up fine collection, the city could raise more revenue.
As Mr. Mamdani weighs how to improve city streets and whether parking regulations should change, almost everyone agrees that the status quo is unacceptable.
Ms. Gelinas said that any of the leading ideas could be an improvement.
“The dumbest thing is just to keep things the way they are,” she said.
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