UES residents fume nearby homeless shelter quietly kept operating despite city order to shut down
A luxury Upper East Side hotel has spent years serving as a quiet homeless shelter, and neighbors say the city cut them out of the loop entirely.The Bentley Hotel, a 21-story tower at 500 E.62nd St.
where rooms once fetched more than $200 a night, is housing 197 people under a taxpayer-funded contract, according to Highland Park Community Development Corporation, the Brooklyn nonprofit running the operation, Upper East Site first reported.It is not the building’s first rodeo as a shelter.The hotel took in homeless New Yorkers displaced from crowded congregate shelters back in May 2020, part of the city’s pandemic-era push to spread people out and slow the spread of COVID-19 inside dorm-style facilities.The Bentley resurfaced as a shelter in 2023, this time designated a Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Center for asylum seekers arriving amid the migrant crisis, with Highland Park landing a $32 million contract to run it, Upper East Site reported.Mayor Zohran Mamdani ordered the city’s last remaining HERRC, in The Bronx, be shuttered by the end of this year.
Yet the Bentley never closed.It simply got a new label.Highland Park’s marketing materials now brand the property a “Tier 2 family shelter” called “Yorkville Sanctuary,” even though the building sits in Lenox Hill, not Yorkville.
The pitch promises to help residents land on their feet.“A Tier 2 family shelter, providing a safe and secure environment to families,” the materials read, according to Upper East Site.“The goal of the program is to assist the families in locating affordable housing.”This has the Upper East Side locals fuming.
The Department of Homeless Services has a track record of alerting Community Board 8 when new shelters open nearby, notifying the board about a 92-bed site on East 91st Street and a 200-bed high-rise on First Avenue.The Bentley got no such heads up, Upper East Site found.Tyler Hollinger, owner of Festivál Café on Second Avenue and a founding ...