Camp LaGuardia shelter to close

Shelter is costing NYC too much, officials say, By Pamela Chergotis Chester — The Camp LaGuardia homeless shelter in Chester and Blooming Grove will close within months, according to an announcement made Thursday by town and county officials. Orange County Executive Edward Diana was scheduled to hold a press conference Thursday. Mary Ann Maglione of the Diana’s office said could not say more than that before the conference, scheduled for after this paper goes to press. But Chester Town councilman Steve Neuhaus told the paper what the big news was about, and Maglione confirmed that, while she could not give further details, the city will indeed be closing the shelter. Neuhaus said a main factor in the city’s decision was the pressure the county and local towns have been putting on New York City, which owns the shelter, to address problems that were putting a strain on the shelter’s neighbors and municipal resources. Community activists from the towns of Chester and Blooming Grove have for years been objecting to what they regard as a degraded quality of life in their neighborboods because of conditions at the shelter, which houses up to 1,001 homeless men from New York City at one time. Some of their complaints have included public urination and drunkenness by residents, lewd comments made by residents to passersby, and the inclusion of parolees and other men with criminal records, especially sex crimes, who live at the shelter for days at a time before their records are known. Community activists have for years been pounding their local officials to get even small concessions from the city, such as an independent monitor to insure the city meets its legal agreement with the county. All local officials have come out strongly against the Camp but have mostly been powerless to do anything about it, other than to threaten costly lawsuits. New York City’s own financial calculations may have been the deciding factor. Neuhaus and Noel Spencer, a new county legislator who had served on the Chester Town Board, said the shelter was simply costing the city too much. The city’s Department of Homeless Services had agreed to pay the non-profit Volunteers of America $13 million a year to run the shelter, whether or not all the beds were filled. In recent months only about 600 to 700 beds have been filled at a time, Neuhaus and Spencer said. Chester Supervisor William Tully said he had been told homelessness in the city had been dropping in recent years. It is not yet clear what will happen to the shelter’s current residents, or to its prime 325-acre property, on a hill overlooking a scenic landscape. Neuhaus and Maglione intimated that the county will be deciding what happens to the land. But the land still belongs to the city, Spencer said. In 2002, he said, Chester’s assessor put the land’s worth at $8.5 million, and the county will be hard pressed to come up with the money now because it is spending $165 million on community college projects in Newburgh and Middletown. “It’s going to be a tough sell for legislators,” Spencer said.