Residents of liberal Park Slope are angrily ramping up their battle to block two towering new homeless shelters in their midst — but other locals are blasting them as hypocrites.
Opponents of the plan booed and shouted down Councilman Brad Lander and former City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, whose nonprofit is set to run the shelters, during a May meeting to tout the project. They demanded the pair scale it back.
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“Quinn made her disdain for ordinary New Yorkers clear when she stormed into the May 1st community meeting spewing angry slurs against our neighbors,” resident Dan Guido said in an email.
A community board member decried what he described as the hypocrisy of the plan’s opponents: “It’s not enough to talk progressive,” Eric McClure said. “You need to walk the walk, as well.”
Since the heated meeting, an online petition opposing the plan has garnered more than 800 signatures. The project entails a 12-story building with as many as 148 units of homeless housing at 535 Fourth Ave., and an 11-story site with 105 such units located one block south.
Dawn Saffayeh, who lives near the sites, said she welcomes the shelters.
“People are afraid of what they don’t know,” she said. “People are just afraid of change, of something new.”
The housing would be offered to families in need, including single mothers, while providing social services aimed at helping occupants get back on their feet.
Those units will cost the city an estimated $30 million per year, according to the Department of Social Services.
The buildings are part of de Blasio’s plan to build 90 shelters across New York as the city struggles to house some 58,000 homeless people.
The city has opened 23 new shelters so far.
Opponents insist they don’t hate the homeless. The Change.org petition calls for a smaller shelter as an alternative.
Guido says the city should focus on building more affordable housing instead of shelters.
“Those two buildings should be permanent affordable housing” he said of the Fourth Avenue sites.
“It is critical that our neighbors experiencing homelessness are given an opportunity to rebuild their lives with permanent housing.”
Lander and Quinn insisted most Park Slope residents support the idea of housing homeless children and their parents. Quinn scoffed at one complaint of residents — that the neighborhood already has a Sanitation waste transfer plant.
“To compare a building that can transform people’s lives, that can help children process horrible trauma, to a garbage facility is offensive,” she told The Post.