Blissville Civic Association April 7, 2018

Honorable Bill de Blasio

Mayor
City Hall
New York, NY 10007

Dear Mayor de Blasio:

The Blissville Civic Association (BCA) has prepared this Fair Share Analysis for your purview.
This analysis is in regard to the proposal put forth by the Department of Homeless Services
(DHS) to register a contract with Home Life Services to operate a 154 room shelter for homeless
adult families at 52-34 Van Dam St, Blissville, Long Island City, NY 11101 (“Site”). The
proposed site consists of an 11 story 67,223 square foot building occupying an 11,795 square
foot lot in the Blissville section of the Long Island City, Queens Community District 2.

Pursuant to Section 203 of the New York City Charter, BCA submits this fair share analysis to
the mayor, with copies to the affected community board, borough president, and Department of
City planning. This analysis weighs the “fair share criteria” put forth by the City Planning
Commission and embodied in Title 62 of the rules of the City of New York. Unique to the
current analysis is actual statistical investigation, which has been absent in previous “analyses”
of this nature, comparing the current proposed site and its surroundings with previously
established like shelters. This investigation allows this proposed shelter decision a grounding in
basic scientific method and theory, in order to bolster results and make the most fit determination
possible.

Our results, outlined briefly below, indicate the proposed shelter is grossly incompatible with the
chosen location for with which it will be placed. Both qualitatively and quantitatively, our results
show significant differences in quality of life for shelter clients when this proposed shelter is
compared with previously established shelters. In addition to a reduced quality of life, a proposed
shelter at this location will produce adverse effects to the characteristics of the surrounding
neighborhood. We urge that this proposed shelter and the location in which it will be placed be
reevaluated by your administration on account of the results produced below.

FAIR SHARE ANALYSIS

The analysis below describes BCA’s consideration of the Fair Share Criteria applicable to the
use of the Site.

Article 4: Citeria for siting or expanding facilities.

4.1(a) Compatibility of the facility with existing facilities and programs in the
immediate vicinity of the Site.

1
The physical environment of the site should be designed to provide a clean and safe environment
for homeless adult families to receive permanent housing while receiving social services
designed to assist them in attaining more affordable housing, off-site. The proposed site consists
of an 11 story, 67,223 square foot building occupying an 11,795 square foot lot in the Blissville
section of the Long Island City, Queens Community District 2. The proposed site is located at
52-34 Van Dam St, Blissville, Long Island City, NY 11101, which borders Van Dam St., 34th
St., and Starr Ave. The facility is located in an M1 zoning district with, primarily, high density
commercial and industrial warehouses, intermixed with few areas of medium density housing.
This residential housing consists of small to medium single and multi-family buildings. Blissville
is isolated because of its zoning status and its geographical barriers including Newtown Creek to
the west, the Long Island Expressway to the east, Dutch Kills to the north, and Calvary Cemetery
to the south. Due to these isolations, Blissville yields only approximately 400 permanent
residents.

Listed here are the city and non-city facilities and residential/ambulatory programs within a 400
foot and half-mile radius of the site. There are no DHS facilities within a 400 foot radius of the
Site. There are two DHS facilities within a half-mile radius of the Site: one for adult single men
(0.1 miles) and one for mixed families and single men (0.44 miles). Including the Site, there are
seven (??) shelters in Community District 2, housing approximately 1,600 clients at any given
time.

The use of this facility to provide permanent housing for homeless adult families is incompatible
and inconsistent with the immediate vicinity and surrounding area, including residential
buildings, and will, most certainly, affect the character of the community. It has been shown that
Blissville is a geographically isolated community of 400 residents surrounded by
manufacturing/commercial warehouses. Including both the existing facilities and the proposed
facility, a minimum of 500 homeless individuals would now populate this already isolated
community. It is clear that these individuals would now represent the majority of the population
of Blissville. This fact then carries with it the potential to completely alter many demographic
characteristics of the current population including (but not limited to) ethnicity, age range, sex,
and socioeconomic status.

4.1(b) Extent to which neighborhood character would be adversely affected by a

concentration of city and non-city facilities.

As discussed below, the use of the Facility as a permanent shelter is grossly incompatible with
the immediate vicinity and surrounding neighborhood (half-mile radius). Two general points
support this conclusion. Firstly, as Blissville is isolated and industrial, the city has seemingly
failed to disseminate city services as it does to with more populated and accessible
neighborhoods. Sanitation services, for example, are many times absent on scheduled pick up
days, lending to longer periods with uncollected refuse. More than doubling the population of
Blissville has the strong potential to exacerbate the already neglected conditions.
In addition to diminished city services, Blissville is also underserved by the city’s public
transportation system. Within a half mile, there is one MTA Bus Stop that runs infrequently.
Within a half mile, there a no Subway Stations. The closest subway station is approximately 0.7
miles away. The walk to the subway also is neither safe nor sheltered. The walk requires one to

2
walk along and over the service road for the L.I.E. in addition to walking long stretches of
industrial streets with nowhere to sit or warm oneself on winter days. This far, unsafe walk will
cause the already crowded MTA bus stop to become overwhelmed. Therefore, the combination
of underserved services makes Blissville inconsistent and incompatible with the Site location.

Secondly, it is understood by BCA that the comprehensive safety and security procedures
implemented at the Facility, and the provision of onsite services by an adequately staffed
program, serve to minimize the potential for adverse effects on the surrounding neighborhood.
However, the quality of training received by security staff has been in recently called into
question given the level of violence witnessed at these facilities
(https://citylimits.org/2017/06/28/shelter-cops-need-more-training-advocates-say/, 2017;
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/renovate-existing-homeless-shelters-building-staff-
article-1.3059009; 2017). These sources suggest that there are detrimental, adverse effects to the
neighborhoods surrounding like facilities and for the clients within the facilities themselves. The
possibility of this phenomenon being consistent with the proposed facility, paired with the
exacerbated conditions of neglect from doubling the number of individuals in an isolated area
such as Blissville, bolster the conclusion that the use of the Facility as a permanent shelter is
grossly incompatible with the immediate vicinity and surrounding neighborhood.

City and Non-City Facilities

As described above the proposed facility is in Queens CD2 in the Blissville section of Long
Island City. The prominent land uses for CD2 are from largest to smallest,
manufacturing/industrial, one- to multi- family residential, transportation/utility, and commercial
space. The neighborhood of Blissville, specifically, is zoned approximately 80%
manufacturing/industrial.

The half-mile radius from the proposed site extends to the termination of Dutch Kills at 47th Ave.
to the north, the L.I.E. to near 39th Pl. to the east, Newtown Creek at Review Ave to the south,
and Whale Creek (offshoot of Newtown Creek) to the west.

The list provided here illustrates the city and non-city facilities and the ambulatory/residential
services within the half mile radius of the proposed site. Included in this perimeter are one public
school, one private school, one food pantry, no soup kitchens, no playgrounds/sports areas, no
public libraries, no hospitals, no parks (one Green Streets Veterans Memorial between Van Dam
St. and Greenpoint Ave), no neighborhood parks, no museums, no public gardens, two
expressways (L.I.E. and B.Q.E.), no state historic places, no Neighborhood Development Area
programs, no legal services initiative, no pedestrian plazas or triangles, no government offices,
no administrative centers or USDA facilities, no music/multi-disciplinary/performing arts
centers, no schools for Pre-K children or children with disabilities, no higher level institutions,
no camps, no educational skill centers, no general Preventative Care Facilities, no dance centers,
no youth programs, no Senior Centers, no Diagnostic Treatment Centers, no Mental Health
Facilities of any kind, no Homeless Services Homebase location, no Emergency Intervention
Services Center, no facility for chemical dependency, no tow truck companies, 10 commercial
garages, two other DHS facilities, three waste treatment plants, no commercial parking lots, no

3
NYC Transit or Other Maintenance Facilities, one fire house, one place of worship (Roman
Catholic), no Post Office, and no police precinct stations.

Though it is stated that many of the basic needs of the residents will be provided by Home Life
onsite, by the criterion assessed above, the use of the proposed facility is clearly incompatible
and inconsistent with the area within the surrounding area and neighborhood. This neighborhood,
which consists, mainly of industrial/manufacturing warehouses and factories and an evident
dearth of many other facility types that individuals frequent when out of the facility, including
parks, recreation areas, community facilities/schools, group care centers, and food pantries.
Thus, for all the reasons stated above, this facility in grossly inconsistent with the surrounding
area/neighborhood and is consistent with having an adverse effect on said neighborhood
character.

Statistical Investigation

As stated above, a statistical investigation was performed and included in the current analysis,
which has been absent in previous “analyses” of this nature. The statistical analyses below were
performed in order to quantitatively test the feasibility of the Site as a location for a new
homeless shelter. The criteria examined were based on the homeless shelters in Crown Heights,
Brooklyn (CH) and Elmhurst, Queens (EH). Given that DHS approved the homeless shelters at
these locations, we assume that their citeria were considered suitable. These same variables
between the shelters at the Blissville site and the other shelters were compared.

In addition to comparing these locations, we are also testing a hypothesis. A hypothesis is a

suggested explanation based on limited data (e.g. the assumption that one will lose weight if one
changes diets). The null hypothesis is simply the opposite of the hypothesis (e.g. one will not
lose weight if one changes diets). In our case, our hypothesis is that the Site location is not a
good fit for Blissville. The null would therefore be that the site is a good fit.

All hypotheses require statistical tests in order to determine whether the hypothesis is actually
correct. These tests yield a level of significance, or p-value, and statistically significant threshold
p-value of 0.05 is employed in all analyses performed here. In statistics, a p-value is a level of
marginal significance that represents the probability of the null hypothesis actually occurring. An
extremely low p-value indicates that there is an extremely low probability that what we perceive
in the data is random. In other words, if a test to compare two sites had an outcome with a p-
value of 0.50, there is a 50% chance that the outcome truly represents what is happening in
reality (supports your hypothesis), but there is also a 50% chance that the outcome resulted from
random occurrence (supports the null hypothesis). However, if a test to compare two sites had an
outcome with a p-value of 0.03, there is a 97% chance that the outcome truly represents what is
happening in reality, and only a 3% chance that the outcome resulted from random occurrence.
Thus, every result with a p-value of 0.05 or lower is deemed “statistically significant” and is
accepted by most of the scientific community as valid evidence supporting a hypothesis.

Data from each site was collected from previous Fair Share Analyses (for CH and EH) and from
the assessment present above (Blissville). Data was then entered into the statistical program

4
SPSS where each test was performed. This investigation evaluated two different sets of variables
based on fair share criteria: density of like facilities around the Site and city and non-facility
facilities surrounding the Site. For the density of like shelters, each site was assessed for the
number of shelters present within 400 feet, a half-mile, and district wide. A Chi-square Test for
Independence was then performed to assess if all sites could be considered similar in this regard,
or if any significant variation was seen (difference between sites). Evaluating city and non-city
facilities around the sites involved entering the facility data found in the Fair Share Analyses and
the assessment above and performing both an Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) test, comparing
all three sites. Following this, separate Independent Samples T-tests were performed comparing
each current site to Blissville. These latter tests were performed due to the variation present in
types of facilities listed for CH and EH. CH has a substantially higher number of types of
facilities listed in the half-mile radius around its Site than EH. Due to this, there is an unequal
distribution of variables that Blissville is being compared to when all sites are compared
together, potentially skewing results. Thus, when the ANOVA comparing all three sites yielded a
statistically significant difference between sites (see below), t-tests were employed comparing
Blissville to each site using the same number of variables as the site it was being compared to.
This eliminates any the potential for skewed outcomes resulting from difference in variable
number from site to site.

Statistical Results

As shown above, all results support the hypothesis that the proposed site and its surrounding
neighborhood is significantly different than other compared sites and is incompatible with
housing a shelter. The only test that yielded a result that was not statistically significant was the
comparison of like facilities using a Chi-square test for independence (p=0.20). This was
presumably due to the extremely low sample sizes the test was performed upon. Many times, if
there is not much information to go on, statistical tests will produce a result, but that result
cannot be confirmed with any level of confidence. Thus, that is most likely occurring here.

All other tests yielded highly significant results when comparing Blissville and the proposed Site
to the other established sites. Primarily, the ANOVA performed yielded a highly significant
result (f=21.235, p<0.001) when all three sites were compared based on their city and non-city
facilities in the surrounding area. As stated above, separate t-tests were then employed to
compare each site with Blissville independently, fearing a possible skewed result from the
ANOVA. When Blissville was compared to EH, a significant result was yielded (t=2.054,
p=0.046), and when Blissville was compared to CH, a highly significant result was yielded
(t=5.187, p<0.001), thus bolstering support of the original hypothesis.

The analysis of the results of comparisons above are statistically significant, meaning that the
observed events are actually occurring and cannot be dismissed as random. These results highly
support the hypothesis that the proposed Site is grossly different from other approved Sites (and
their surrounding areas) and that the proposed Site is not a good fit for the neighborhood of
Blissville.

5
 Chi-Square Tests

Asymp. Sig.
Value df (2-sided)

Pearson Chi-Square 6.000(a) 4 .199

Likelihood Ratio 6.592 4 .159

Linear-by-Linear
1.143 1 .285
Association

N of Valid Cases 3

Table 1. Results of Pearson Chi-square test comparing density of like facilities around proposed Site and current Sites.

ANOVA

Facilities

Sum of
Squares df Mean Square F Sig.

Between Groups 423.896 2 211.948 21.235 .000

Within Groups 1626.948 163 9.981

Total 2050.843 165

Table 2. Results of ANOVA comparing city and non-city facilities surrounding proposed Site and current Sites.

6
 Independent Samples Test

Levene's Test for

Equality of Variances t-test for Equality of Means

Mean Std. Error 95% Confidence Interval

F Sig. t df Sig. (2-tailed) Difference Difference of the Difference

Lower Upper Lower Upper Lower Upper Lower Upper Lower

Facilities Equal variances

36.042 .000 5.187 108 .000 3.640 .702 2.249 5.030
assumed

Equal variances
5.106 60.286 .000 3.640 .713 2.214 5.065
not assumed

Table 3. Results of Independent Samples t-test comparing city and non-city facilities surrounding proposed Site and current Site in
Crown Heights, Brooklyn.

Independent Samples Test

Levene's Test for

Equality of Variances t-test for Equality of Means

Mean Std. Error 95% Confidence Interval

F Sig. t df Sig. (2-tailed) Difference Difference of the Difference

Lower Upper Lower Upper Lower Upper Lower Upper Lower

Fac1 Equal variances

.410 .525 2.054 42 .046 1.364 .664 .024 2.704
assumed

Equal variances
2.054 41.797 .046 1.364 .664 .023 2.704
not assumed

Table 4. Results of Independent Samples t-test comparing city and non-city facilities surrounding proposed Site and current Site in
Elmhurst, Queens.

7
 8