The city checked over 150 homeless men into an upscale Brooklyn hotel and apartment tower to ride out the coronavirus potentially delivering the pandemic to the doorstep of the building’s residential units, fearful tenants told The Post.
“There were people lined up outside the hotel and they weren’t wearing masks and gloves. They weren’t social-distancing at all,” said one resident, describing the scene when approximately 160 homeless were dropped off at the Tillary Hotel in Downtown Brooklyn on May 15, with no warning to tenants.
“They were also chilling out in the lobby, talking, sitting beside each other on the couch,” continued the tenant, who asked not to be identified by name. “A couple of them had masks on, but most did not.”
As part of a City Hall push to get the homeless off the street and out of cramped congregate shelters with the pandemic raging, the crush of newcomers were ushered into most of the building’s 174 hotel rooms on its six lowest floors, which once hosted Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman’s wife during his federal trial.
But above the hotel sit five floors of apartments with an average monthly rent of $3,342, according to StreetEasy.com — full of tenants who say that the move undermines their own painstaking efforts to avoid the plague.
“I don’t want to even go out there for fresh air, because I don’t want to come into contact with these people that aren’t social distancing, aren’t wearing masks, aren’t wearing gloves, and just touching everything,” said the first resident.
“I feel like I’ve done my part at social distancing, but then the city moves these people in who aren’t practicing this at all.”
A second tenant, paying $3,200 in monthly rent in the building at Flatbush Avenue Extension and Tillary Street, voiced similar concerns.
“You see them walking around everywhere without masks,” said the resident, who also asked not to be identified by name. “They’re using our same stairs, elevators, lobby, without masks.”
Both tenants also noted that the homeless hotel residents are free to come and go from the hours of 9 a.m. and 6 p.m., leading them to question whether it defeated the point of them being off the streets.
“The whole purpose of the city offering shelters to the homeless is so that they can quarantine, not so they can walk around as they please from nine to six,” said the second tenant.
The residents also cited general security concerns, saying that some of their new neighbors openly use drugs and that the city saw fit to install a metal detector in the hotel lobby when they moved in.
“If the city doesn’t think these people are safe if they’re having, on the hotel side, a metal detector, then I have to assume the same,” said the second tenant.
Added the first, who pays about $3,300 in monthly rent, “I just don’t feel like I should be paying this amount of money to live in a homeless shelter.”
Their biggest fear, however, is that the move will introduce the contagion into the building.
A spokesman for the city’s Department of Homeless Services insisted that the location is not being used to house positive or symptomatic homeless.
But two men both of whom were openly smoking pot outside the hotel, and neither of whom was wearing a mask — told The Post that they were never tested for the bug.
“They didn’t test us for s–t,” said one of the homeless men.
Tenants said that they’d called on both building management and the city to at least make the homeless guests follow commonsense preventative measures.
Leo Rubin, one of the building’s landlords, told The Post that he had no idea what he was signed up for when he agreed to take in homeless New Yorkers at a rate of $100 per room per day.
“I don’t have to tell you what the hotel has been going through for the past three months. So you go over it and you decide you’re closed anyway, why not take in the homeless?” said Rubin. “I thought it was maybe veterans, older, calmer people.
“I had no idea what I was getting myself into,” he said.
Isaac McGinn, a DHS spokesman, said that the homeless were no more bound to abide by coronavirus precautions than the average city resident.
“Just like all other New Yorkers, our clients are free to take a walk, get fresh air, or exercise. Just like all other New Yorkers, we are not monitoring with tracking devices how and where they may spend their time,” said McGinn.
“And just like all New Yorkers, we encourage our clients to stay inside as much as possible, or wear a mask or face covering if you will be unable to social distance –– and we provide PPE masks/face-coverings to staff and clients alike, including and especially for anyone who doesn’t have one.”