The troubled men’s homeless shelter on Wards Island has continued to deteriorate into an unsanitary COVID-19 nightmare, a group of elected city officials said after touring the facility Monday.
“Nobody should be here,” City Councilman Stephen Levin told reporters outside the Clarke Thomas Men’s Shelter. “Nobody should be in this building right now.”
The harsh take on the 233-bed shelter off Hell Gate Circle is just the latest slap at the city-run facility, long the target of complaints from homeless residents and advocates.
The critics Monday said social distancing is non-existent at the facility — even in the midst of a resurgence of the pandemic — with beds no more than 2 feet apart and masks rarely donned by residents.
“If you have COVID, it’s going to spread in there,” said Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, who led the tour with Levin and Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer.
The group, which included “Da Homeless Hero” Shams DaBaron, a onetime vagrant New Yorker-turned-activist, addressed reporters outside after the tour.
“I remember how horrible this experience was,” said DaBaron, who once lived at the shelter, to the press. “It was so bad that it led me to increasing my drinking, and (it) developed into a major problem.
“This place does not foster growth and development,” he said. “It fosters death and destruction.”
The visiting officials blamed the state of the shelter on Mayor Bill de Blasio, saying the city hasn’t done enough to help the homeless men placed in the facility — which they noted is physically far from the mental-health and counseling services that many require.
Last year, a former shelter resident launched a petition drive to bring attention to what he called a dire situation at the center, blaming the city Department of Homeless Services for the alleged unsanitary conditions and creating a hotbed for COVID-19.
On Monday, residents at the shelter griped about the “abhorrent” conditions that they say remain unaddressed at the isolated facility.
“The conditions here are deplorable — roaches, mice, flies,” said shelter resident Anthony Simmons, 52. “[Staffers] don’t clean the bathroom properly. They just mop the floor.
“It’s better in the street than it is in here, and I’m in a wheelchair saying that,” he said.
Gerald Patterson, 54, who has lived at Clarke Thomas for three years, called the facility “nasty.
“People will piss on the floor before they piss in the toilet,” he told The Post. “They will s–t and throw up in the shower before they do it in the toilet.
“It’s crazy,” Patterson added. “You can’t sleep at night. You have people hollering and bugging out at night. You have people with knives here and razors. It’s ridiculous.”
The residents said the city did have the bathrooms recently cleaned — but only in anticipation of the tour by Williams and the other officials, who brought reporters with them.
“This place is a nightmare,” said a shelter resident, who would only identify himself as Marvin, to The Post. “It’s an absolute nightmare.”
Officials at City Hall said Monday that the city has invested “hundreds of millions of dollars” in its previously underfunded shelter system, including the Wards Island facility.
The money pays for such things as on-site vaccinations and COVID testing at least twice a week at city shelters while implementing protocols for treatment and quarantine of residents who do test positive for the virus.
Since 2016, de Blasio’s “Turning the Tide” plan has also ramped up repairs at such facilities and included more than 59,000 shelter inspections, with violations now at an all-time low as the facilities clean up their acts, the statement said.
While acknowledging that “there is always more work to be done,” city officials said their “proactive” initiatives have reduced the shelter population to about 45,000 — “well below the level when Mayor de Blasio took office in 2014.”
The city signed a $45 million deal with HELP USA in 2019 to lead the effort.
Additional reporting by Julia Marsh