(DNAINFO)  Ben Fractenberg | October 9, 2017 — The city is still using commercial hotels to house homeless New Yorkers, despite a pledge last year to phase them out following a fatal stabbing at a homeless hotel.

The de Blasio administration has said its first priority is to end the use of “cluster housing” as it also opens new stand-alone shelters across the city.

In recent weeks, homeless shelters have popped up at hotels in Williamsburg, Sunnyside and Kew Gardens, to the dismay of some neighbors and elected officials who say they were given little warning about the plans. The Department of Homeless Services says the sites are necessary to shelter residents and families who would otherwise have nowhere to go.

While Mayor Bill de Blasio has pledged to phase out the use of hotel shelters by 2023, the city is  focused first on eliminating its use of “cluster sites” — apartments located in private buildings that the city rents as shelter space — while also opening 90 new homeless shelters citywide in the coming years.

“While we are phasing out cluster units as first priority and increasing high-quality borough-based shelter capacity citywide, we are using commercial hotels…as a bridge to provide shelter to homeless New Yorkers, including families with children, who would otherwise be turned out into the street,” DHS Spokesman Isaac McGinn told DNAinfo New York last week.

Source: Homeless Placed in New Hotel Sites Despite City’s Pledge to Phase Them Out – Midtown – New York – DNAinfo