Community

MANHATTAN – Thanksgiving is just days away and some Upper East Siders have another reason to be thankful, after Council Member Ben Kallos and the Stanley M. Isaacs Neighborhood Center teamed up on Monday to give away hundreds of frozen turkeys to families-in-need and public housing residents in Yorkville.

“We’ve been giving out free turkeys for eight years since I first took office, and I’m so proud that this is our biggest year yet,” said Council Member Ben Kallos.

Joining Kallos for the turkey giveaway Monday afternoon was Council Member-elect Julie Menin, who will take his place representing the Upper East Side— as well as Stanley Isaacs Neighborhood Center Executive Director Gregory Morris.

The three, along with volunteers from the Neighborhood Center— which is located inside the New York City Housing Authority’s Isaac Houses and Holmes Towers developments on East 93rd Street— passed out five hundred turkeys to public housing residents and families.

City Councilman Ben Kallos (D-Manhattan) introduced legislation Thursday to legalize so-called “flex apartments,” where temporary walls are installed. This longtime, unlawful Big Apple practice has historically provided greedy landlords with additional rooms to rent and enterprising tenants with extra privacy to attract roommates to help cover rent.

Under city law, it’s illegal to install temporary walls or other floor-to-ceiling dividers unless proposed changes are submitted to the city by a licensed engineer or architect and then greenlighted through a Buildings Department permit.

WEST VILLAGE, NY — The day a sidewalk scaffolding shed first went up over part of a West 9th Street block, Rudy Giuliani was mayor of New York City, "Shakespeare In Love" had recently won Best Picture at the Academy Awards and Britney Spears had just earned her first No. 1 hit.

It's still there.

The shed of wood and metal first went up outside 24-26 West 9th St. on Nov. 7, 1999. Though official records show it came down briefly in 2004 and again in 2007, it quickly returned both times, making it a 22-year blight, frustrated local residents said.

"Manhattanites are so sick of this nonsense: sidewalk sheds go up and decades later they are still up. It is frankly embarrassing for us as a City that we cannot get these repairs done and get the sheds down," Kallos told Patch.

"My legislation would force the building owner here to make the necessary repairs for the facade to be safe and then take the scaffolding down all within 90 days. If they don't want to, the city would get it done, and the landlord would have to deal with the bill. With over 300 miles of scaffolding crowding City sidewalks, hurting local businesses, and ruining quality of life, the time is now to enact this reform."

The two winning projects in this year's round of participatory budgeting in Ben Kallos's District 5 are: $750,00 for laptops and other STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) programs at 15 schools in the district; and $187,000 to plant 50 trees with guards on sidewalks.

"I am proud of the millions of dollars our community has voted on over the years. Our residents have prioritized education and beautifying our neighborhood this year," Kallos said Wednesday when his office announced the results.

Ben Kallos attends a ribbon-cutting on the East River Esplanade in April 2019. Voting for this year's participatory budgeting projects opens April 5. (Jeffrey WZ Reed/New York City Council)

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — For the eighth straight year, residents of the Upper East Side can vote to decide how $1 million of their City Council member's budget should be spent.

Nine different projects are in the running for this year's round of participatory budgeting in District 5, represented by Ben Kallos and covering the eastern stretch of the Upper East Side as well as Roosevelt Island.

Kallos has made about $1 million available for neighborhood projects — one of just four Council members who set aside money this year for participatory budgeting. (Plans for a citywide program have been delayed due to the pandemic.)

Online voting will run from April 5 to April 14. (More information below on how to vote.)

Here are the District 5 projects on the ballot for participatory budgeting this year:

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• $750,000 to purchase laptop carts for 10 District 5 schools
• $700,000 to purchase and install new play equipment at NYCHA Lexington Houses
• $500,000 for an expansion of the children's play areas in Rupert Park
• $450,000 to renovate, update and configure bathrooms at Talent Unlimited High School
• $300,000 to replace the existing wheelchair lift at the New York Public Library at 328 East 67th Street with an improved design for accessibility
• $285,000 to purchase and install public safety cameras to cover five high-traffic locations
• $250,000 to repair and finish the flooring, upgrade the lighting and replace all safety wall padding at P.S./I.S. 217 gym
• $250,000 to fund the purchase of telemetry machines at H+H Coler Hospital
• $187,000 to plant 50 new trees with guards on sidewalks throughout the district

Councilmember Ben Kallos is grateful for the Mayor’s allocation of $284 million to the East River Esplanade, but he wants repairs to start now.Photo by Dean Moses

“At this point we are three quarters of a billion, and some of the money is moving. We were able to get a repair done on 76th Street in less than six months during a pandemic, but now the challenge is to say to the Mayor, ‘Thank you for the money, start the work now,'” Kallos said.

Now the funds have be allocated, residents are keeping their eyes peeled, waiting for the announcement of when they can expect construction to begin.

Just months after New York City offered early voting for the first time during a presidential election, voters could soon get more early voting options under a new City Council bill expected to be introduced Thursday.

The bill, which Upper East Side Councilman Ben Kallos, plans to introduce to the Council at a Thursday meeting, would increase the number of early voting sites, with expanded hours of operation and at least two sites required in each Council district initially for the upcoming June primary.

“This would add at least two early voting polling sites per Council district for the coming election and would eventually scale up to eight. It would also give voters more hours to vote,” Kallos told the Daily News. “During the last election, there were zero early voting sites in my Council district. To be fair, one was 500 feet outside my district, but we don’t have enough early voting sites.”

Kallos blamed the city Board of Elections and legislators in Albany and called state lawmakers “corrupt” for not passing a law mandating more early voting sites.

The current state law requires just seven sites per county, he pointed out.

You’re probably used to seeing headlines about neighborhood groups as they rail against shelters and hotels housing homeless New Yorkers — particularly over the past year and particularly on the Upper West Side. This week, residents on the Upper East Side surprisingly bucked that trend: At a community-board meeting about a new shelter on East 91st Street, locals overwhelmingly supported the project, Patch reported. “No fanfare, no problem. The men can stay,” said City Councilmember Ben Kallos, who actually advocated for the shelter (imagine that!).

This couldn’t be more different from the monthslong saga of their neighbors on the other side of Central Park. There, residents raised just shy of $180,000 to support legal action against three Upper West Side hotels to oust their homeless residents, and on a Facebook group, locals openly fantasized about using wasp spray and dog feces to make the homeless feel unwelcome. Some now oppose a newly planned shelter for women on West 59th Street. As one commenter on a recent West Side Rag post put it, “I don’t want to hear another word from anybody that the UWS isn’t doing its ‘fair share’ of housing the homeless. We’re doing far more. Why doesn’t the UES have any shelters and we get flooded with them?” This sentiment was echoed at community-board meetings, where residents asked why their similarly well-to-do Upper East Side neighbors weren’t hosting more homeless beds.

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — A proposed shelter on the Upper East Side won the unanimous backing of a community board committee on Wednesday, as members expressed hope that the new facility could help the neighborhood's street homeless population find more permanent housing.

The 88-bed shelter is set to open in January 2022 on East 91st Street between First and York avenues. It will be run by Goddard Riverside, the housing-focused nonprofit that is headquartered on the Upper West Side and operates nearly two dozen locations around Manhattan.

An existing building at the current site will be torn down to make way for the new seven-story structure, which will be purpose-built as a shelter serving single adult men and women.

The facility will be a Safe Haven — a type of shelter with a low threshold for admission, whose primary goal is to get people off the streets and into a safe bed. The site will offer social and meal services, counseling, and a rooftop recreational area.

A number of elected officials joined Wednesday's Community Board 8 meeting to speak out in favor of the shelter. City Councilmember Ben Kallos, whose office had advocated for the facility, said it would serve the neighborhood's street homeless residents who are already visible in places like subway stations.

A number of elected officials joined Wednesday's Community Board 8 meeting to speak out in favor of the shelter. City Councilmember Ben Kallos, whose office had advocated for the facility, said it would serve the neighborhood's street homeless residents who are already visible in places like subway stations.

"There's one person on 86th Street on the downtown entrance, there's one person on the northbound entrance ... we all know who they are, we know what they look like," he said.

State Sen. Liz Krueger, whose East Side district includes two other Safe Havens, said neighbors have welcomed the facilities.

"The communities are very glad that they opened and they're actually seeing a difference in people on their streets or not on their streets," Krueger said.

Some residents said the apparent support for the shelter contrasted with the Upper East Side's reputation as a less-than-welcoming neighborhood for the homeless. Resident Ben Wetzler said he hoped the shelter's move-in would be conflict-free, unlike the recent battles on the Upper West Side.

"I'm really hopeful that our neighborhood will be more welcoming and do a better job of working with you," he said.

No one at Wednesday's meeting said they opposed the shelter, although two neighbors expressed concerns about safety. In response, representatives from Goddard Riverside said the shelter would have 24/7 security, as well as psychiatry services for any seriously mentally ill people admitted there.

Among the shelter's supporters were two students at East Side Middle School, located down the block from the future facility.

"I feel that it is very important to help people feel welcome so that they can accept these services," said seventh-grader Ahana. "It's also important to empathize with others to try to understand how you would feel if you were in their situation."

The shelter, and the supporting resolution passed on Wednesday, will be discussed again at CB8's full board meeting on Jan. 20.

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY – A new Urban Outreach Center location opened in the Upper East Side Thursday, offering food and assistance to those in need.

The new site includes a supermarket-style food pantry that allows visitors the comfort of being able to choose from available foods, adding dignity and a sense of normalcy for people receiving fresh produce and healthy staples from the pantry.

The location also includes community dinners on Tuesday evenings, offering hot, restaurant-quality meals to food-insecure families senior citizens and low-income New Yorkers.

There are also clothing rooms, mail distribution services and a job center.

"The Urban Outreach Center is committed to ending the hunger gap in East Harlem and the Upper East Side – providing our low-income neighbors with the healthy food they need, with the dignity they deserve," said The Rev. Jordan Tarwater, Executive Director of the Urban Outreach Center of NYC, in a prepared statement. "We are so grateful for the warm reception from the neighborhood and the outpouring of support from those who share our vision that no parent, child, or senior citizen in NYC should struggle because they lack access to food or other basic resources."

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The Urban Outreach Center is a new nonprofit created from the historic homeless services mission of Avenue Church NY