Hotel Lucerne on Upper West Side converts to ‘temporary’ homeless shelter

Normally live-and-let-live Upper West Siders are freaked out that the city’s Department of Homeless Services converted a third large neighborhood hotel into a “temporary” homeless shelter – without even warning them first. The Hotel Lucerne at 201 W. 79th St. on Monday began welcoming the first of nearly 300 homeless men, many of them methadone …

Normally live-and-let-live Upper West Siders are freaked out that the city’s Department of Homeless Services converted a third large neighborhood hotel into a “temporary” homeless shelter – without even warning them first.

The Hotel Lucerne at 201 W. 79th St. on Monday began welcoming the first of nearly 300 homeless men, many of them methadone users and “recovering” alcoholics. School buses dropped off the men and their makeshift bags at the hotel, whose website recently touted the inn as a “sophisticated” venue “imbued with European-inspired architectural charm and modern amenities.”

Dorota Brosen, who lives across the street from the previously converted Belleclaire on West 77th Street, watched the Lucerne move-in and warned, “I see what goes on from my window. There’s drinking, smoking and sleeping on the sidewalk. People are afraid to walk past.”

The Lucerne is one of 140 hotels citywide that DHS tapped since the pandemic broke out to take in the homeless, who are considered at greater risk for COVID-19 infection if they remain in city-run shelters. Some 13,500 single adults are now being put up in hotels.

It’s a boon to beleaguered hotel owners who had struggled even before the pandemic due to a glut of rooms. But although FEMA is supposedly paying the city 75 percent of the cost to house homeless in hotels during the pandemic, the program’s economics are mostly a mystery.

The Department of Homeless Services, which launched the program, won’t even provide a list of all the converted hotels, citing “privacy” issues.

Hotel and program staff help to carry clothes and items belonging to homeless residents who will be staying at The Hotel Lucerne as part of a deal with the city.

Stephen Yang

Pre-pandemic estimates were that the average nightly cost of housing the homeless in city-run shelters was $150 for each person. On Monday, DHS spokesman Isaac McGinn told The Post that the city’s average nightly cost for a hotel unit used for homeless people was $237 including for the room itself plus “social services.”

But he didn’t respond to questions about how much the city pays to specific hotel owners or to Project Renewal, the nonprofit that manages the homeless hotels under the program.

Unlike many other converted hotels that are in fringe or largely commercial neighborhoods, the Lucerne, the Belleclaire and the Belnord stand in the heart of the residential Upper West Side.

The Lucerne news stunned residents of the West 70s and 80s, who only learned of the move last week from Council Member Helen Rosenthal.

Furious local residents berated Rosenthal on the sidewalk in front of the Lucerne on Monday over the failure to warn them in advance. She bridled that they were being “nasty” and said, to the disbelief of many, that she didn’t know about the Lucerne either until only a few days ago.

CB7 chair Mark Diller said the community was “denied the opportunity” to discuss the situation with DHS in advance and to “share with them the issues that the community is concerned about and rightfully so.”

“We’re back to where we were fifty years ago,” longtime area resident Michael D’Onfrio told The Post – referring to the area’s decrepit and dangerous conditions in the 1970s.

Don Evans, a restaurant operator and consultant who lives one block away, fumed, “This f—ing mayor. He wants to piss people off.”

Evans, chairman of the Taste of the Upper West Side food festivals, said, “A lot of people on the Upper West Side are away now. They’re going to be shocked when they get back to the city.”

Jane Hershcopf Shreck, a film continuity specialist and dancer who is returning with her husband from a stay on the East End, said, “I’m now terrified to go home.” She’s lived across the street from the Lucerne since 1976 and worries that the homeless influx will revive conditions when “there were places where you couldn’t walk.”

Comments posted on the web site of the Upper West Side Rag, which first reported the Lucerne takeover, included, “As a parent with a young child who owns an apartment close to the Lucerne, I am literally terrified of what this could mean to the safety of our neighborhood and our family.”

According to Project Renewal, the Lucerne’s 283 “guests” are being relocated from Kenton Hall Men’s Shelter on the Bowery, which is supposed to help rehabilitate methadone users but has been described by skeptics as a “drug den,” and from the Third Street Men’s Shelter. Project Renewal promised to provide ample security inside the Lucerne and on the street.

New York Council Member Helen Rosenthal (right) argues with some of her District 6 constituents outside the Hotel Lucerne.Stephen Yang

But at least some other arrivals are said to be coming from the Washington Jefferson Hotel on West 51st Street, where occupants have been seen shooting heroin and harassing passersby.

Caught in the Lucerne crosshairs is Nice Matin, a popular restaurant on the hotel’s ground floor. A neighborhood institution since 2003, its 50 outdoor seats have been packed on both its Broadway and West 79th Street sides.

But customers on West 79th will now sit just feet from the Lucerne entrance.

Nice Matin owner Simon Oren issued a diplomatic statement: “While we are very concerned about the impact on the neighborhood and ultimately our business, we are also very aware that everyone deserves a safe place to live. We truly hope that the shelter is well run and that adequate support services are available for all of the residents and the community.”

Oren needs to speak cautiously as Nice Matin pays rent to the building owner, a company called Grand America Associates. But an employee who declined to be named said, “Of course I’m worried,” and another said she was afraid to return to work.

Evans, the restaurateur who isn’t involved at Nice Matin said, “Once word gets out it’s going to kill their business.”

With additional reporting by Sam Raskin