Concerned East Village residents on Wednesday lost their bid to stop the Mamdani administration from relocating hundreds of homeless men into their neighborhood.
A Manhattan judge dismissed the lawsuit from the downtown neighbors that sought to block the city from building a new shelter intake center for single, adult men on East Third Street.
“There is no legal basis to find that [the city’s] decision to relocate the intake center to East Third Street was made in violation of law or in an arbitrary and capricious manner,” Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Sabrina Kraus ruled.
The furious locals — known as VOICE, for Village Organization for the Integrity of Community Engagement — sued the city in April, claiming the move was rushed and side-stepped required hearings and public review.
Kraus, who had previously issued an order delaying the center’s opening, wrote that she “understands the basis for concern” — including their “frustration with the lack of opportunity to be heard on an issue that may indeed change the character of their block and neighborhood.”
But she said the group failed to cite a “mandatory factor” in the relocation that would have triggered any of the city’s various land use review processes.
Neither the city nor reps for the residents immediately responded to a request for comment.
VOICE’s attorney Randy Mastro, in a court hearing last month, claimed the Mamdani admin had already spent $1.3 million on renovations to the city-owned building chosen for the new intake center.
It was once the site of a notoriously dingy and dangerous men’s shelter in the 1980s.
“This is a major capital project… a major change in use with enormous impacts on the community,” he argued in court.
But despite Krause appearing skeptical of the city’s arguments during the hearing, she wrote in her ruling that the law could not call the relocation a major change of use.
“Neither the change nor the renovations are substantial enough to trigger said review,” she ruled, and deemed the fact that the new shelter use does not require a new certificate of occupancy as “significant.”
