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

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.