[nearnostrand]

The Bedford Armory is on the Crown Heights side of Atlantic, but its improper handling will affect the other side of of Atlantic too. Please read about the mayor's plan making the Bedford Armory the central intake center for the entire city, while reducing the number of beds from 350 to 230 and possibly creating a scenario that will have more homeless men wandering the streets with no place to stay. (The Bellvue intake center in Manhattan is set to be turned into a hotel, etc., etc. - you know - something that the well to do will enjoy.)

A rally was held at the Armory on June 1st. The latest rally will be held tomorrow, Wednesday, June 25th, at 12:00pm on the steps of city hall. Please read about the Armory below.

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According to New York State's online registry, there are 27 Level 3 sex offenders living at the city-run Bedford-Atlantic Armory in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, or directly across the street at a second homeless facility run by a nonprofit using funds from the Department of Homeless Services.
A Level 3 designation is reserved for New York's most violent rapists and pedophiles, men who have done vile, unspeakable things to women and children. They are among the hundreds living at the twin shelters who end up wandering the streets of Crown Heights because they are ordered out of the shelter each morning with nothing constructive to do.
That is how DHS currently puts families at risk every day, just as they have for more than 25 years since the armory was converted into one of the worst-run shelters in the city.
And that is why it's outrageous that DHS recently announced plans to bring thousands more homeless men to the same overburdened neighborhood by relocating New York's central intake center for single homeless men from Bellevue Hospital in midtown Manhattan to the Brooklyn armory.
Mayor Bloomberg's administration, which sprung this shameful plan on Brooklyn without warning - not even Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, a loyal Bloomberg ally, got a heads-up - has managed to do what many thought was impossible: unite the diverse, often bickering voices of Crown Heights into a unanimous roar.
Young and old, black and Jewish, rich and poor will all be on hand for a rally against the plan at 12:30 p.m. this Sunday right near the scene of the crime, the corner of Bedford and Atlantic Aves. Rally details are at revitalizecrownheights.org.
DHS has been trying to sell the unworkable plan as a shrinking of Bedford-Atlantic from 350 beds to 230. That is not true.
According to the city's own figures, 11,575 men showed up at the central intake center for the homeless at Bellevue between January 1 and May 7 this year. Of those, 2,909 were coming into the shelter system for the first time.
Under the DHS plan, those thousands would be sent to Crown Heights starting next year. And while there would be room to house "only" 230 at the armory overnight, the other thousands now showing up at Bellevue would be sent to Brooklyn.
That gets the equation backward. According to the Coalition for the Homeless, about 60% of the homeless living on the street are in Manhattan, compared with only 16% in Brooklyn. Directing the men to a brownstone neighborhood - to a place with a well-earned reputation for violence and drug use - almost ensures many will remain on the streets rather than endure the transportation hassles and the dangers waiting for them at Bedford-Atlantic.
Daily News intern Angel Rendon has started a blog detailing the long history of violence and drug use at the armory, available at closeitdown.blogspot.com. It includes the embarrassing incident a few weeks ago, when DHS Commissioner Rob Hess took a New York Times reporter on a tour of the facility - only to have the writer interview a fearful shelter resident who described life at the site as "a combination of drug sales, drug use, constant thieving. Constant."
My advice to the Crown Heights Revitalization Movement, the group sponsoring Sunday's rally, is that the group call for Bedford-Atlantic to be shut down altogether, in the same way and for the same reasons the Education Department closes failed schools - to acknowledge that a new, fresh start is needed.
After a quarter century of effort, DHS has brought disgrace upon itself and crime and violence to a struggling neighborhood that deserves better. Instead of compounding its failures, City Hall needs to stop the relocation plan dead in its tracks and focus on cleaning up the mess it has already made.
elouis@nydailynews.com


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