As controversy swirls around a Queens veterans shelter where critics claim former servicemen are housed under atrocious conditions, two local City Council members on Wednesday defiantly refused to join a scheduled tour of the facility, calling it a “staged presentation.”
“We will not attend today’s scheduled tour of the Borden Avenue Veterans Residence,” Councilmembers Phil Wong and Julie Won said in a joint statement. “This facility continues to be in deplorable condition despite advocacy from our offices and our predecessors for the last decade. The veterans who live there deserve far better than a staged presentation.”
The city says elected officials are free to tour the facility, but the City Charter requires authorization first.
“Oversight doesn’t look like this,” the two councilmembers protested. “It is unacceptable that the Institute for Community Living continues to conceal the conditions veterans endure every day instead of fixing these issues. The City Charter charges councilmembers with overseeing and investigating city agencies and city-funded operations. That authority requires no permission from, or advance notice to, the Mayor’s Office.”
Located in Long Island City, the 243-bed veterans residence has recently come under intense scrutiny after the Mamdani administration recently rejected more than $1 million in federal funding for it, due to the Trump administration’s conditioning the money on the shelter not housing transgender male vets.
The funding flap, in turn, cast renewed attention on the oft-criticized, 40-year-old shelter, with residents reporting tarps set up due to the leaky roof, meager meals of rice and beans, drug activity and subpar security.
Last Thursday, Wong and Won were denied entry to the facility, which is run by the Institute for Community Living, after showing up unannounced. On Monday, Erin Dalton, the commissioner of the city’s Department of Social Services, toured the shelter, and the two councilmembers confronted her outside about the place’s conditions.
Shelter residents reportedly told Wong and Won that city and ICL workers were inside frantically fixing it up in preparation for Wednesday’s scheduled visit. The politicians later entered the facility on their own and observed what they called unacceptable conditions.
“Since Friday, the Institute for Community Living has cleaned and prepared the facility for today’s visit,” Wong and Won said Wednesday. “On Monday, ahead of DSS Commissioner Erin Dalton’s visit, the provider directed residents to help clean, while also setting out food for the commissioner, prompting one veteran to tell us: ‘We don’t even get that.’
“We will not take part in a tour designed to hide serious failures,” they said. “We will continue to expose the conditions at Borden Avenue and demand the treatment, dignity and services our homeless veterans deserve.”
Gerardo Romo / NYC Council Media Unit
City Council Member Julie Won. (Gerardo Romo / NYC Council Media Unit)
Two elected officials did tour the facility on Wednesday: Rep. Nydia Velazquez and Councilman Frank Morano, chairperson of the Council’s Veterans Committee.
“A lot of the problems that my colleagues have talked about were still there,” Morano said afterward. “There are still leaking pipes and there are still tarps that are covering the leaking pipes. It looks relatively clean. But, honestly, I think that the way conditions are today isn’t necessarily the way we should be judging how the conditions are on a regular basis. An announced visit, where you have two city commissioners…it’s not necessarily the best way to judge.”
Velazquez said that “accountability and transparency” are critical for the shelter moving forward.
Morano added that the veterans “deserve the dignity” of at least having shower curtains added in the barracks-style open showers, another complaint residents have brought up. He said his committee will hold a hearing on the shelter on Oct. 21.
Daniel Kurzany, Wong’s chief of staff, was outside the building during the tour. He said that when he was chief of staff of former Councilman Robert Holden, who chaired the Veterans Committee, it was never a problem to tour the facility unannounced.
“We knew that it was going to be a sanitized tour,” Kurzany scoffed, “a dog-and-pony show.”
A DSS spokesperson said the city rejected the Veterans Administration’s grant for the Borden Ave. shelter because the amount had been lowered, plus would have required discrimination against transgender vets. The City Charter does not allow unauthorized inspection of shelters, she added. Repairs to the shelter’s roof are underway after being delayed by last month’s nor’easter, she added, with $6 million allocated for its more permanent repair.