City Admits Gowanus Super 8 Used for Homeless; Hotel Says it’s ‘Just Busy’
(DNAINFO) Caroline Spivack | August 10, 2017 — If you call the inexplicably busy Super 8 hotel on Third Avenue and ask if they have any homeless people living there, you’ll get a flat-out “no.”
But the Department of Homeless Services has a different story — the city is renting 53 of the 57 rooms at the Super 8 hotel on 267 Third Ave., between Union and President streets, to single, homeless men and has been since August 2015, DHS spokesman Isaac McGinn told DNAinfo New York this week.
On Tuesday, a receptionist, who declined to give her name, claimed that is not the case even when she was confronted with the city’s confirmation.
“No, there are no homeless people staying here and if you want further comment speak with my manager,” she said. “We used to have a family shelter here a few months ago but that stopped a few months ago. It’s just regular customers now.”
She linked the sudden swell of occupants, who have booked up the hotel through mid-December, to simply being “busy.” The hotel’s general manager did not respond to requests for comment.
DHS spokesman McGinn said one other hotel in the area is being used to house homeless people but citing privacy reasons, declined to say which one.
Queens Councilman Eric Ulrich hopes to crack down on that type of discrepancy and on Wednesday introduced a bill that would require hotel owners inform patrons if they house the homeless and force inns contracted with DHS to visibly post signs stating such.
“The public has a right to know whether or not that hotel or that motel is also being used as a temporary homeless shelter,” said Ulrich.
A surge of the city booking rooms for the homeless has peppered the five boroughs with inns standing in as shelters. An April report by Comptroller Scott Stringer showed that the number of rooms booked by the city jumped from 2,069 last October to 2,852 in February. Figures of homeless New Yorkers staying in hotels surged from 5,881 to 7,790 during that same period.