By: Nick Carraway

A New York state judge has struck down the city’s plan to open a homeless shelter for ex-convicts and drug addicts just steps away from a Lower Manhattan elementary school, ruling that officials failed to properly consider the risks to children.

The NY Post first reported that Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron issued the decision on Aug. 25, finding that the city did not fully evaluate the “potential negative effects” of placing the 106-bed facility at 320 Pearl Street, a former Hampton Inn. The shelter’s entrance would have been only five feet from the Peck Slip School, where children as young as three attend classes. An outdoor smoking area was also planned directly beneath school windows.

“There are two, eight-hundred pound gorillas in the room,” Engoron wrote in his ruling, the NY Post first reported. “The first is the fact that the proposal would place a shelter for troubled adults adjacent to a school for three-to-eleven-year-olds. The second is the City’s cavalier attitude towards fulfilling its obligation to demonstrate that it seriously considered the siting criteria.”

The city had awarded nonprofit Breaking Ground Management a five-year, $42.3 million contract in January 2024 to run what is known as a “low-barrier” shelter — facilities that relax many traditional screening requirements, including criminal background checks. The goal, officials said, was to reduce obstacles for those struggling with homelessness.

But critics pointed out that such shelters can house individuals with drug addiction issues, criminal records, and in some cases sex offender histories. Parents at the Peck Slip School were outraged when the plan was revealed, the NY Post first reported. Many said they only learned of the shelter when the Department of Social Services disclosed the proposal on June 13, 2024, just before the start of summer break.

“They decided to place the riskiest homeless population with possible mental, drug, criminal, and sex offender issues directly next to young children, our most precious and vulnerable population,” parents argued in court papers filed in September 2024. “This is not only arbitrary, capricious and irrational — it is insane.”

Justice Engoron sharply criticized the city’s claim that it had adequately considered the school’s proximity when it said it reviewed “public facilities and institutions” within a 400-foot radius. That assertion, he said, was “whistling past the graveyard at best and disingenuous at worst.”

Under Engoron’s order, the Department of Homeless Services must conduct a new “Fair Share” analysis to evaluate how the shelter would impact the surrounding neighborhood. It remains unclear, however, whether the agency intends to redo the process or abandon the project altogether. The NY Post first reported that DHS declined to comment on the future of its $42 million contract with Breaking Ground.

“Every neighborhood deserves to have the resources required to support New Yorkers experiencing homelessness on their path to stable, permanent housing,” DHS spokesman Nicholas Jacobelli said in a statement to the NY Post first reported. “While we disagree with this court decision, we will be weighing all our options.”

Breaking Ground, the nonprofit operator, did not respond to requests for comment.

For parents at Peck Slip School, the ruling is a victory — at least for now — in their fight to keep the city from opening a shelter for troubled adults directly next to a building full of young children.