#New UWS group hires lawyer to address homeless issue

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Homeless people sleeping on a bench in the Upper West Side.
Stephen Yang

A newly formed Upper West Side residents’ group is bringing in the big guns — hiring a high-profile lawyer to get City Hall to do something about the troubling influx of homeless in their neighborhood.

The West Side Community Organization says it has put in hundreds of 311 calls to the city but has gotten no action, as vagrants placed in local hotels and shelters roam the streets, relieving themselves in public, picking through trash cans, and ignoring coronavirus safety measures.

So they sought help from attorney Randy Mastro, listed this year as one of the top 100 most politically powerful lawyers by City & State magazine.

“What the (Mayor Bill) de Blasio administration has done here shocks the conscience and has to be stopped,” Mastro, a former federal prosecutor and onetime Big Apple deputy mayor, told The Post Wednesday.

“In the guise of addressing a problem, it has created far greater problems that are proving devastating to this neighborhood and endangering residents and homeless alike,” he said. “We are calling on the de Blasio administration to clear up this mess of its own making.”

“And if it fails to promptly do so, we’ll go to court,” Mastro said.

He said Manhattan’s Community District 7, which covers the bulk of the neighborhood, already has 10 shelters and commercial hotels housing homeless people.

The new neighborhood group, formed to address the issue, registered with the state Department of State as a nonprofit organization just this week.

It grew up out of un Upper West Side safer streets Facebook page that has thousands of members — although the nonprofit’s membership is not yet clear, co-founder Alison Morpurgo said Wednesday.

“We are concerned about the declining condition of our neighborhood,” Morpurgo said. “We are concerned for the people that live here, for the people who have been moved in overnight, for small businesses and the future of the neighborhood.”

She said the group isn’t merely complaining about the deteriorating quality of life in the neighborhood due to the huge spike in homeless — many of whom were moved into area hotels by the city as a means to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

The group is also worried about the lack of social and mental health services being provided to the homeless.

“Time is of the essence,” she said.

Officials in the mayor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but de Blasio addressed the issue at his morning briefing with reporters this week.

“This is not something we normally would have wanted to do at all,” he said. “And it did cause some challenges, but we’re addressing them case by case on the ground.”

“We’re going to start the process of figuring out where we can get homeless individuals back into safe shelter facilities and reduce the reliance on hotels,” de Blasio said. “Hotels is certainly not where we want to be in general and we’re going to start that process immediately.”

Isaac McGinn, a spokesman for the city’s Department of Homeless Services, said in a statement that moving homeless people and families into temporary hotel shelters has saved lives, “stopping the spread of the deadly virus.”

“Our whole city is navigating this unprecedented situation together, and our emergency use of commercial hotels ensures New Yorkers experience homelessness continue to receive the same protections from the pandemic as New Yorkers fortunate enough to distance at home right now”