New York City’s Department of Homeless Services is shutting down Manhattan’s massive 30th Street Shelter — the main intake location for men and adult families entering the city’s behemoth shelter system for over 40 years.
The remaining 250 residents of the hulking nine-story brick building built in 1931 will be moved out by mid-March, while intake operations for men and adult families will be relocated by April, according to Sneha Choudhary, a spokesperson for the Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
The building is in dire need of renovations. At its peak, it had the capacity for 850 shelter beds, but far fewer men had been living there due to deteriorating conditions in sections of the building that were shut down, Choudhary said. The administration is still considering its plans for the building and whether it needs to be demolished or can be renovated, she said.
The city plans to relocate intake for men to an existing shelter on East 3rd Street, while intake for adult families will be moved to a shelter on Bowery, Choudhary said.
After the closure, some staff will remain at the 30th Street location to redirect people to the new intake locations, she said.
City officials first confirmed the closure to Gothamist. Word has spread in recent days among staff and residents of the upcoming closure, people told THE CITY Wednesday.
“We weren’t even told officially. The staff is in limbo,” one longtime Department of Homeless Services employee, who spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to speak to reporters, told THE CITY on Wednesday.
Several shelter residents told THE CITY they’d learned about the closure from workers and other residents, while some said they’d been told to sign transfer notices saying they’d be moved to another shelter location. One transfer notice reviewed by THE CITY said the person would be sent to a shelter in Gowanus but it didn’t say on what date they had to leave.
Corey Sims, 32, said he’d just come to intake this week and got assigned to the 30th Street shelter where he’d thought he’d be for a month, but when he got to his dorm upstairs, they told him to sign another piece of paper telling him he’d have to leave in two weeks.
“That’s upsetting,” Sims said. Sims said he was worried documentation of his stay would get lost when he moved and he’d have to restart the assessment process again before he’d be able to get a longer-term shelter bed. “Now you’re postponing what I’m here to accomplish.”
In a joint statement from the Coalition for the Homeless and the Legal Aid Society, which represents the Coalition in its ongoing settlement with the city over New York’s “right to shelter” protections, the groups raised concerns about the sudden closure.
“For decades, the 30th Street facility has served as the primary intake center for adult men and adult families across all five boroughs,” the statement read. “Any disruption to this critical front door to shelter — especially on short notice — risks creating confusion and additional hardship for people who are already experiencing homelessness.”
‘Shocking’
The 30th Street shelter has been the main front door into the city’s massive shelter system which now houses more than 85,000 people on a given night. In addition to several hundred beds for men for shorter-term stays, men and adult families also arrive for intake at the 30th Street facility before being assigned to shelters all across the city.
The impact of the closure cannot be underestimated. For decades, the 30th street location has been passed by word of mouth among anyone needing a place to stay in New York and beyond.
People were still turning up and being taken in on Thursday: “I’m homeless. I just found out about this place yesterday,” said a man who said he’d come from New Jersey looking for a bed.
Another man said he’d passed through Bellevue Hospital several times in the course of becoming homeless and finding shelter.
“I’m just shocked that it’s closing,” the man said, giving just his first name, Leor, before jumping on a bus to head to his newly-assigned shelter.
The nearly 100-year-old building first opened in 1933 as Bellevue Hospital’s psychiatric ward. The ward later moved into Bellevue’s new hospital building down the block, and the city opened a shelter there in 1984.
The Bloomberg administration attempted to shut the shelter down and even floated a plan to turn it into a luxury hotel, which was roundly criticized by advocates.
At nearly 100 years old, the building is in dire need of fixes. In 2020, THE CITY reported the building had long been plagued with hazardous conditions from asbestos and serious fire safety violations, to collapsing ceilings and faulty elevators.
The closure comes at a transitional moment for the Department of Homeless Services. Molly Wasow Park, a longtime bureaucrat who helmed the agency during the historic migrant crisis, just tendered her resignation. Her replacement is Erin Dalton, tapped by Mamdani’s administration, who comes from leading the Allegheny County Department of Human Services in the Pittsburgh area. There, she oversaw a shelter system that had just about a thousand residents, about a small fraction of the size of New York City’s complex system which includes hundreds of shelters across the five boroughs.
It also comes as Mamdani is moving to shut down the last remaining large-scale migrant shelter located in The Bronx by the end of the year.
Eddie Robinson said he’d gotten a notice this week telling him he’d be moved to a new location imminently. He’d recently ended up at Bellevue after he stopped being able to work a restaurant job in Harlem due to an injury and was kicked out of his apartment.
“I’m sure it probably needs repairs. A lot of mice,” he said. “But so far as the building itself, it works, it’s livable, it’s clean, you know — but they know more than what we know.”