Hoping to prevent the former Calhoun School building at 160 West 74th Street (between Amsterdam Avenue and Columbus Avenue) from becoming a homeless shelter, a UWS community group is calling on the city to instead consider creating public housing or reusing it as a school.
The Friends of the Upper West Side argue that housing for low-income families and individuals is a better fit for the neighborhood. They also believe more schools are needed. The group sent a letter this week to Mayor Eric Adams and Schools Chancellor David Banks urging City Hall to abandon the shelter plan and consider one of two uses – affordable housing or a school. The proposal follows an executive order issued Wednesday by Adams that requires city agencies to review city and town properties for potential affordable housing.
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“Look no further, Mr. Mayor,” said Terry Rosenberg, director of the Friends, in the group’s press release. “This building is in great shape. It just needs a few basic renovations and could be a wonderful home for many. In fact, Cushman & Wakefield (the real estate agency) marketed the building last year as ideal for residential use. This is a win-win for the city, the neighborhood and hopefully the new tenants.”
“As you have emphasized many times, the future of NYC depends largely on affordable housing and education. We applaud your efforts to increase educational options for NYC families and also to create more affordable housing to address this chronic problem that has existed for decades and threatens New York’s future,” the letter to Adams and Banks begins. “When the historic former Calhoun School building… was offered for sale for market-rate housing by Cushman & Wakefield, while we regretted the loss of a beloved school that had been in operation since 1897, we also understood the need for permanent housing.”
The historic red-brick Calhoun School building, which housed the lower school, is located between Columbus Avenue and Amsterdam Avenue. When the school announced plans to merge with Metropolitan Montessori School in 2022, it was sold for $14 million to investment firm Bayrock Capital, which at the time talked about possibly converting it into market-rate housing. That changed last year, when the 22,000-square-foot building was instead leased to the nonprofit Volunteers of America, an anti-poverty organization that works with the city’s Department of Social Services (DSS), to convert the building into a 146-bed women’s homeless shelter, expected to open in the fall. That change sparked an outcry of opposition in the neighborhood and led to the formation of the Friends of the Upper West Side.
“Without anyone knowing, it ended up in a homeless shelter,” Friends President Jim Francis told ILTUWS about the move from market-rate housing to plans for a homeless shelter. “It was all done behind the scenes. There was a complete lack of transparency.”
The Friends say the shelter will cost taxpayers at least $79 million over nine years, though DSS could not immediately confirm that figure. Francis told ILTUWS that it was difficult to get details about the financial agreement between Bayrock, Volunteers of America and DSS, but after much searching, he finally got that figure.
“We had to dig a bit to find it,” Francis said. “It wasn’t easy.”
In addition to the rent for the building, the amount also includes the payment of numerous social services that the residents of the home receive.
Francis said Bayrock will get the building back after nine years and can then use it as it sees fit.
“They are profiteers of poverty,” Francis said of Bayrock. “They are profiting off the homeless. It’s disgusting. And it’s at the taxpayers’ expense.”
On their website, the Friends are calling on residents of the region to join the fight to close the animal shelter.
“We need your support to spread the message that the UWS needs more schools and more permanent housing, not more emergency accommodation,” the website says. “With your support, we can send the message to City Hall that dodgy accommodation contracts without community support are unacceptable.”
“As longtime residents of the Upper West Side, Friends of the UWS embrace diversity and inclusion and believe the building could be put to much better use if it were used as much-needed affordable housing or as a school,” the group said in a press release.
In response to the Friends’ letter to Adams and Banks, a DSS spokesperson told ILTUWS via email that the mayor’s order to encourage the creation of affordable housing should not conflict with ongoing efforts to provide a social safety net for the city’s vulnerable populations, which includes the proposed housing.
“The Mayor’s directive does not address the very resources the agency is supposed to provide to ensure the City has a robust social safety net,” the DSS statement said. “We cannot trade off important safety net resources for vulnerable New Yorkers and affordable housing, both of which are critical to ensuring we can effectively address the citywide challenges of homelessness.”
It was further stated that the home would be the first in the district to be reserved only for women.
“This high-quality shelter will be the first of its kind in this community, providing homeless women with a critical safety net and support to reintegrate into permanent housing. Emergency shelters are fundamental to our mission of enabling long-term housing stability for at-risk New Yorkers, as shelter staff provide connections to vital necessities such as rental assistance, social services, and healthcare,” the DSS statement continued. “We are grateful for the support of communities to help us meet the City’s moral obligation to immediately provide housing to New Yorkers in desperate need of stable environments and services. Our efforts have helped increase permanent shelter placements by 20% year over year as we invest in innovative housing solutions to increase access to highly affordable housing options for shelter residents.”
In addition to providing temporary accommodation, the shelter will offer the women a range of transitional services to help them get back on their feet and find permanent housing, including counseling, life skills workshops, support groups, housing assistance, health services, legal advice, vocational training and job search assistance, and more.
“Another overcrowded shelter is not the solution!” the Friends wrote on their Facebook page. “The future of NYC depends on more education and affordable housing, not more shelters.”
DSS is still considering opening the shelter in the fall, but Francis says a look inside the building’s windows shows that’s unrealistic.
“It’s far from finished,” he said. “There’s no way it’ll be finished in the fall. The demolition has only just begun.”
