Residents at a city homeless shelter on Randall’s Island are in revolt over what they say are unsanitary living conditions creating a hotbed for COVID-19.
Former resident Alfonzo Forney, 41, who claims several men at the Clarke Thomas shelter have come down with the virus, is circulating a petition signed by dozens who live in the shelter demanding new management.
On March 28, the petition reads, “the resident in bed 1055 … was taken out by ambulance, exhibiting various symptoms of COVID-19.” It goes on to accuse safety director [John] Bradley of allowing three people to stay in the same bed before it was decontaminated.
Roy Coleman, 69, another resident who was diagnosed with coronavirus at Harlem Hospital this week, was sent back to the shelter after his condition was known and spent the night there before being discharged, he told The Post. Coleman said he was eventually given a Metrocard by the shelter and told to make his way to a Marriott in Long Island City — a hotel providing temporary housing to homeless New Yorkers with coronavirus.
“You don’t send a person like that who is COVID-19 positive on the bus or a train,” Forney said.
A Department of Homeless Services police officer at Clarke Thomas told the Post that neither the city nor shelter has provided them with any personal protective equipment and that soap and hand sanitizer were nonexistent in the facility (outside staff offices).
“The PPE I have now, was supplied by another officer,” the cop said.
A rep for Clake Thomas disputed allegations from Forney and others saying an internal investigation “found those claims to be without merit.”