Why do we have a City Charter? Why is this administration investing $50 million to launch a new Office of Mass Engagement while simultaneously dismantling the engagement processes we already have?
The answer, it seems, is purely performative. While the administration touts “engagement,” it is ignoring the City Charter and steamrolling neighborhoods. Instead of adhering to the rules and procedures required by law, the city is doing whatever it wants, without giving New Yorkers a say in the future of their own blocks.
I am a member of a community group in the East Village that recently lost a court case to stop the city from placing an in-take center for hundreds of homeless men on our residential block. We sought to force the city to follow its own standard procedures. (We have filed a notice of appeal.)
We didn’t lose because our concerns were invalid; we lost because the city successfully hid behind a legal technicality, arguing that by “relocating” an existing facility rather than “opening” a new one, they were exempt from the transparency and “fair share” rules required by the City Charter.
It is outrageous that the city claimed to be entitled to a legal loophole rather than face the community.
We did not hear about this massive project through a formal notice or a public hearing. We found out from an article in the New York Times. Even our local precinct was not made aware that the massive intake operation long located at Bellevue Hospital was being relocated into their jurisdiction.
The building, 8 E. 3rd St., is being transformed into both the citywide intake center and a substance abuse program.
If that weren’t enough, less than 250 feet away, the city will relocate a separate intake center for families without children. Within a four-block radius, our community already hosts four shelters. We have lived with the unhoused for decades, but there is a breaking point where “fair share” becomes an “unfair burden” — and the city has crossed it.
The administration of Mayor Mamdani promised a new era of sunlight. He budgeted $50 million for the Office of Mass Engagement to give everyone a voice.
A look at the official March 2026 Community Board 3 minutes reveals the depth of this betrayal: while the Board spent hours voting on sidewalk cafes and liquor licenses, the 3rd St. intake center was never even put to a vote. It was relegated to a “report item,” a footnote handed down as a fait accompli.
In her ruling, Manhattan state Supreme Court Justice Sabrina Kraus, after initially seemingly highly skeptical, bought into that misguided argument that leaves communities on the sidelines. That can’t possibly be what the law is intended to require of city officials before making decisions of this consequence. She understood “the frustration with the lack of opportunity to be heard on an issue that may indeed change the character of their block and neighborhood.”
We are not asking for special treatment; we are asking for the law to be followed. We are asking for the “engagement” we were promised.
Six months after the intake center opens, we invite the mayor to visit our street. We suspect he will find the same chaotic disaster that forced the city to move the intake center away from this very location in the 1980s. Maybe then he’ll realize that $50 million for “engagement” is worthless if you’ve already decided to stop listening to the people you represent.
Goff, an East Village resident, is a founding member of V.O.I.C.E.: Village Organization for the Integrity of Community Engagement.