03/11/2022
August 6, 2020
Truth and Compassion for the Men of the Lucerne
Dear SAJ Community,
In the past few weeks, a controversy has erupted on the Upper West Side regarding the temporary use of local hotels to shelter homeless men. Since the decision to move them from shelters where socially distancing was not possible was made with urgent public health concerns in mind, the normal community engagement process for housing the homeless in residential neighborhoods was not followed. Unfortunately, this has resulted in a great deal of misinformation and mistrust. Sadly, hateful and dehumanizing rhetoric and active harassment towards these men have also emerged in the community.
I have been in touch nearly daily with the Director Project Renewal, the agency running the shelter at the Lucerne Hotel and he has put together this FAQ sheet. Meanwhile, I want to highlight a few things:
700 men are living in three hotels on the Upper West Side. This is of a total of now over 13,000 homeless people living in around 140 hotels throughout the city.
In the Lucerne Hotel, there are no registered s*x offenders that are legally required to be distanced from school zones. There have been rumors about the other two hotels and current reports state that everyone who needed to be moved has been moved.
The shelter accepts men who have a history and current use of alcohol and drug abuse, which is often the reason they were homeless in the first place. These men, as well as the broader community, are safer when they are in shelter and not on the streets; there is also evidence that drug and alcohol use decreases in shelter
When ambulances are called to the hotel, this does not always indicate a drug overdose. Many of the men have chronic health conditions and out of concerns of liability, ambulances are called.
Crime rates have primarily stayed the same or decreased in the week since the men’s arrival into the neighborhood and have been lower than in years past at this time.
This I hope lends some “emet” - some truth and transparency to the situation. Now, I must speak passionately about “hesed” - compassion. In the past two weeks, I have been dismayed by what I have seen and heard about (some members of) the community’s response to these new temporary residents. A few examples include: reports from Project Renewal’s staff of being harassed on the street because people confuse them with residents due to their skin color; photograph after photograph of these men being posted on social media without their permission and most of the time, the photograph is of men simply sitting on a street corner or bench talking to each other as if their presence in the neighborhood is itself a crime; community members calling Project Renewal’s 24 hour hotline (created to help them respond in real time to problems) non-stop and verbally abusing the staff who answer; individuals on a Facebook Group for “Safer Streets” being kicked off the list for suggesting that members of the community donate or visit the shelter; calls for an in person protest to call for the immediate removal of these men.
All of these examples and the many more I am not naming I betray our Jewish values -- values of welcoming the stranger, recognizing that each person is “b’tselem elohim” -- created in the Divine Image, treating others with “kavod” - dignity, dan l’kaf z’chut-- giving the benefit of the doubt, not closing our hearts to the needy (Deuteronomy 15)-- to name just a few. Further, dehumanizing these men makes the problem about them instead of seeing homelessness as a systemic issue that needs to be addressed through policy and societal change.
Here are things you can do to address to support these men and/counter the narrative:
Visit the Lucerne to say hello. Bring some cookies or fresh fruit to share with the residents. When I know more about needs for donation, I will let you know.
Sign this alternative petition supporting the residents and calling for systemic solutions to the problem of homelessness. (The petition was crafted by a group of Upper West Side moms including two of our members)
Write to elected officials to tell them you support these men’s right to safe shelter in a pandemic. Emails can be found at the bottom of this letter.
Learn more about the roots of homelessness and examine our own prejudices. I have gathered a group of faith leaders on the UWS and we are hoping to use this moment to begin community education on the issues of homelessness in the NYC community. Stay tuned!
Practice kindness and call out cruelty. Whether or not you agree with the city’s proposal, we should never dehumanize another person. Rather, we should seek out opportunities to learn their stories and lift up their humanity.
With hopes for emet - truth- and hesed - compassion for the Upper West Side and our whole world,
Rabbi Lauren
