On any given night in the city, there are 78,600 homeless people “which is 63 percent higher than in 2009,” according to the New York Times.

In October 2020, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced his intention to rezone parts of Soho and Noho — an area bounded by Astor Place and Houston Street to the north; Bowery, Lafayette, and Baxter streets to the east; Canal Street to the south; and Sixth Avenue, West Broadway, and Broadway to the west — in an effort to create up to 800 new affordable apartments in the city where there are fewer than 8,000 residents (according to a 2010 census). 

Despite very vocal opposition from the ritzy neighborhoods’ residents, de Blasio's administration intends to update industrial zoning rules from the 1960s to allow for new retail and mixed-income residential development. Among the new projects already being planned in anticipation of the changes (although this project requires no special zoning) is a men's shelter which will house 200 men in a converted garage at 349 Canal Street (6 Wooster) in Soho.

The four-story parking garage is currently owned by Park-It Management, which is said to already be negotiating a sale through the city with David Levitan’s Liberty One Group, a Manhattan developer. Via Liberty, Westhab, one of NY's largest private-shelter landlords, would undertake a long-term lease for the shelter. The new facility would reuse the garage with Westhab taking on a gut renovation​, a process ​estimated to take 18 months.

Park-It Management's owner​,​ Gary Spindler​,​ cites the city's heavy taxes on parking facilities as his impetus ​for seeking alternative uses for his building​s. 

349 Canal Street | Google Street View

The shelter is sure to be met with intense local opposition over the coming weeks and months, but advocates are expected to respond just as fiercely. 

A New York Times article quoted Barika Williams, the executive director of the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development, saying, “The system we have allows mainly rich, white neighborhoods to opt-out of things, and to say ‘we don’t want that,’ but forces Black, brown and immigrant neighborhoods to take these things on.”

Mayor de Blasio’s spokesman, Mitch Schwartz, commented, “it is genuinely fair to wonder how this neighborhood could possibly get any whiter or wealthier.” 

The spokeswoman for the Department of Social Services and the Department of Homeless Services told The Real Deal, “Working together with neighbors and not-for-profit service provider Westhab, we’re confident that these New Yorkers will be warmly welcomed — and through collaborative support and compassion, we will make this the best experience it can be for all.”

But the jury is out on how successful this project will be. Last year, the tony Upper West Side hotel, The Lucerne, became a men’s shelter with disastrous results as the neighborhood reactions were strong. 

A New Republic article summed up the UWS Lucerne experiment saying, “the men of the Lucerne hotel have seen the worst of the city’s self-described liberal residents. They’ve also exposed a decades-long policy failure in permanent housing.”

Correction 4/5/21: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Liberty One Group was in talks to lease the building.