“No More Shelters!”: Sheepshead Bay Residents Protest Homeless Facility
“No more shelters!” chanted Brooklyn protesters.
Hundreds marched through Sheepshead Bay to protest a new proposed homeless shelter on May 4th. Opponents say they’d prefer new housing, and many expressed fear about who would move into a shelter.
“No neighborhood wants a homeless shelter,” said state assemblymember Lester Chang, a Republican representing nearby parts of Brooklyn. “And the mayor and the policy is forcing each neighborhood to have a homeless shelter. And why, why, why is that? We don’t need it!”
Protesters previously set up encampments to protest the shelter, and the NYPD arrested two people.
Dimple Willabus, a protest organizer who is also running as a Democrat for City Council District 46, says the arrests didn’t need to happen. “I stand with our NYPD officers and the 61st precinct,” Willabus said. “But what has happened is that there was extra officers who came in from other precincts, and they are not familiar with the community.”
]The presumptive Republican nominee for Mayor, Curtis Sliwa, led most of the march. “Whether it’s for us or against us, we’re then going over to City Hall because Eric Adams refuses to come into this community,” he told the crowd at the end of the march.
Sliwa says it’s communities like this one that could power him to a strong showing in the November election.
He said the campaign will “build on the coalition” from his last run in 2021. “Southeast Asians who are facing similar problems, a lot of Latinos, a lot of West Indians, Caribbeans,” he said. “Really it’s outer boroughs – Staten Island, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx – that are getting flooded with these shelters.”
And he’s got some support.
Assemblymember Chang said he believes in Sliwa’s view and vision. “He’s a street guy, he’s a street fighter. He knows the street,” said Chang. “I know he’s real.”
Eric Santomauro-Stenzel is a reporter from Long Island, NY and covers politics for City Newsroom. His prior coverage has included social movements, discrimination, education, and more. He is a recent graduate of Hamilton College outside of Utica, NY.
