Litigation Resumes Over Safe Haven Residence at the Seaport
The parents of students at the Peck Slip School who litigated against City Hall last year to prevent the opening of a homeless shelter at 320 Pearl Street (located adjacent to the school) has restarted their lawsuit.
In August of last year, the Peck Slip Advocates for School Safety (PASS) appeared to have won their legal battle, when State Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron found that, “regardless of whether the siting is a good or bad idea, the approval process was significantly and fatally flawed,” and ruled, “the Court hereby enjoins the City of New York… from opening or operating a proposed homeless shelter at 320 Pearl Street, absent the filing of a new Fair Share Statement that complies with the law.”
This was a reference to a 1989 revision to the City Charter requiring the municipal government to ensure that communities are getting an equitable portion of amenities (such as parks and libraries), while shouldering reasonable responsibility for problems such as homelessness.
Of particular concern to PASS was the nature of the proposed shelter, which was planned to be a “safe haven” facility. As a former board member for Breaking Ground (the nonprofit operating the shelter at 320 Pearl) explained in a deposition, such facilities “place minimal requirements upon residents and are designed to appeal to homeless people with mental illness and substance use issues living on the street or in public spaces and unwilling or unable to navigate or tolerate larger, conventional shelter settings,” adding, “100 percent of the inhabitants of safe haven shelters suffer from mental illness and/or substance use issues.”
The Peck Slip parents’ seeming victory was short-lived, however. In February, within the space of three days, the administration of Mayor Zohran Mamdani filed a new Fair Share analysis with the court, then (without waiting for the judge to review or approve the new Fair Share Statement) issued a press release announcing the opening of the facility, and began accepting shelter residents.
The City’s updated Fair Share analysis argued that numerous safe haven shelters have been situated in close proximity to schools without causing harm to children. But when Joe Sullivan, the Lower Manhattan attorney representing PASS, began analyzing the new Fair Share filing, he compared Google maps of homeless shelters with similar maps of public schools and found that the Peck Slip School’s “placement directly next to and attached to the 320 Pearl Street Safe Haven is unique in New York City.”
In response, the City filed a brief explaining that these examples were compiled by the Street Solutions Unit of the Department of Homeless Services (DHS), “which oversees Safe Havens for the agency, during preparation of the Amended Fair Share. To compile the examples, the Street Solutions Unit reached out to the Safe Havens in its portfolio and asked them to identify nearby schools. The Program Directors of each Safe Haven (who are employed by the non-profit providers) reported this information back to Street Solutions. This information is reported narratively, and is not measured exactly.”
Mr. Sullivan replied, in a follow-up brief, “it is hard to determine what explanation City Respondents are providing for the false, inaccurate, and misleading information in the Amended Fair Share Statement, but it would appear that City Respondents are claiming that they asked Safe Haven providers if they were located near schools and put the information that they received from the Safe Haven providers into [the second] Fair Share Statement without checking to see if the information was accurate.”
Melvin Browning, a lawyer for the City’s Department of Social Services (DSS), replied in court filing that the City “does not, in its evaluation of providers’ proposals, take proximity to schools into account. Individuals experiencing homelessness – whether on the street or elsewhere – do not pose any heightened danger to children or educational institutions. This is based upon DHS’s deep expertise and experience overseeing hundreds of City shelters, including approximately 4,000 Safe Haven beds.”
Lawyers for the City also argued that PASS’s “gripes with certain statements in the Amended Fair Share, including minor errors identifying locations of non-DHS facilities near other shelters, do not rise to the level of a Fair Share violation,” and the “lawsuit boils down to stigma against homeless New Yorkers and unsupported speculation that Safe Haven clients pose a danger to schoolchildren, a view which is contradicted by DHS’s own experience.”
This assertion is countered by Anthony Hannigan, who is both the grandfather of a Peck Slip student and a former board member of Breaking Ground, the nonprofit retained by the City to operate the shelter at 320 Pearl. He is also the founder and former president of the Center for Urban Community Services (CUCS), a nonprofit that develops supportive housing services. In a court filing, Mr. Hannigan said, “during my tenure as the president and chief executive officer, CUCS never operated a safe haven or other residential facility for homeless individuals directly next to a school.” If he had been presented with such an option, “I would have vetoed it, knowing that any community would rightfully and strongly oppose it.”
“To my knowledge, no safe haven has ever before been sited directly adjacent next to a school (sharing a wall) with entrances of the school and safe haven or shelter being only feet apart,” he continued. “The proposed safe haven at 320 Pearl Street does just that and will expose elementary school children, including pre-K for three and four year olds, to any resident behavior that may occur during school hours.”
“The reality is that safe haven shelters, compared to mainstream residences, receive a greater number of visits from emergency vehicles such as EMS, NYPD, and the NYFD responding to individuals in mental health crises,” Mr. Hannigan added.
After the multiple filings by both sides, the State Supreme Court is expected to hold oral arguments in this case before the end of the year. At the heart of the current round of litigation is the issue of expertise. If the court finds that the City possesses genuine expertise in siting and managing homeless shelters (and particularly safe haven facilities) near schools, then long-established legal custom dictates that a judge will defer to a government agency making such a decision, regardless of whether the court happens to agree with that choice.
But if the court determines that the relevant City agencies have no such competence (based, for example, on a finding that the City has not done this before), then the judge would be free to find that the decision is “arbitrary, capricious, or unreasonable.” This would open the door to the court overruling the City’s decision.
A spokesperson for the City’s Law Department (which represents the Mamdani administration in these proceedings), said, “as oral argument has not yet been scheduled, we have not had the opportunity to address the baseless claims… from the petitioner’s reply to our response.”
He added that Breaking Ground “provides comprehensive staffing/security measures,” at the 320 Pearl shelter, “and has even adjusted the designated population to clients aged 60-plus in response to community concerns.”