It’s a ticking time bomb.
The city’s Bellevue Men’s Shelter at 30th Street and First Avenue in Kips Bay has become a tinder box of newly arrived migrants, unhinged vagrants, and sex offenders – an explosive amalgam that’s wreaking havoc on the streets of the once-quiet residential neighborhood.
“In the last six months, it’s gotten really, really scary,” according to one terrified resident of the block who said police recently contacted him about an armed robbery and a carjacking in front of his house. “The situation appears to be reaching a tipping point.”
At the 1,000-bed shelter — the city’s largest for single men — residents told The Post about overcrowding, fights, and tensions with the newly arrived asylum seekers. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott began flooding the Big Apple with busloads of migrants in early August. Six more buses arrived Saturday.
“We don’t want them here because, to be honest with you, to me they’re getting treated better than we do and this is supposed to be ours,” said Darrell Pankey, a homeless resident for six months.
It’s gonna blow up any day now,” he added.
Conditions have become increasingly chaotic at the shelter.
There have been 1,196 calls this year to 911 regarding the shelter (through Sunday), up a staggering 607% from the 169 calls received for the same period in 2021.
Of this year’s calls, 908 were ambulance cases. Emergency operators logged 26 calls for disputes (up from seven); five for assaults in progress (up from two); and 12 for other crimes (up from one).
The FDNY responded to the building Friday morning on a report of people stuck in an elevator that turned out to be a “malicious false alarm,” the department said.
The building, a former psychiatric hospital that dates to 1929, is sandwiched between the Bellevue and NYU Langone hospital campuses, and also serves as an intake center for the city’s shelter system.
Another homeless local, Jeffery Harris, contends the migrants have been stealing phones to try to reach their families back home.
“This place is full to capacity. There ain’t no beds and they’re still sending them. They can’t fix this place fast enough to accommodate them,” Harris said.
”READ FULL ARTICLE: https://nypost.com/2022/09/17/nyc-largest-men-shelter-on-the-brink-as-migrants-flood-in/
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