Erin Drinkwater, Deputy Commissioner of Intergovernmental and Legislative Affairs at NYC Department of Social Services, has tapped 1 Kenilworth Place, formerly a Brooklyn College dormitory, for a new massive 200 person women’s shelter, right near Flatbush Junction, a transit hub used by Flatbush, Midwood, Flatlands, and East Flatbush residents.
There is concern that once the shelter is in place, it will eventually be turned into a men’s shelter, a bait and switch pattern the city is known to do since men’s shelters are needed in greater number, but it’s easier to first override resident resistance by starting with a women’s shelter. Facts on the ground!
It is important to consider that Flatbush Junction, by Brooklyn College and Midwood High School, is also the final stop of the 2/5, which means this stop is also used by Midwood residents on the east side of the neighborhood who are going into Manhattan, particularly the Wall Street area, which the Q and D trains bypass.
It isn’t clear if Steven Banks and Erin Drinkwater will be replaced by incoming Mayor Eric Adams, who recently praised Banks’s performance and hinted he may keep him, despite their intense conflict with the Upper West Side and other communities and an exploding homeless population.
As part of decarceration during the BLM protests, prisoners were put in the Lucerne Hotel overnight, and they preceded to create havoc with violence, theft, open air drug use, and degenerate acts that cannot be listed in a family publication, but were covered extensively in secular media and on Twitter. But all cries for help by Upper West Side residents were condemned by Drinkwater as mere hatred coming from White Supremacists.
There was a tremendous neighborhood outcry, and Drinkwater’s answer was to repeatedly and bizarrely vilify the mostly Jewish Moms as White Supremacists, and boast she was “afflicting the comfortable.”
When pressed on what she meant, Drinkwater claimed she was merely quoting the Christian Bible. This was a particularly unsatisfactory answer, first because it was disproportionately Jewish Moms she was “afflicting,” and secondly, there is apparently no such quote in the Christian Bible anyway, it’s a line by the fictional Mr. Dooley.
The “Afflicters” became an Upper West Side and then a NYC Twitter meme, explained by Seth Barron in a NY Post Op-ed on “Afflicter politics.” Barron explained,
…it’s frightening to consider that New York is now run by progressive militants who appear to believe that their vocation is to “afflict” their constituents by disrupting their undeserved calm and comfort. Mass immiseration is not a side effect of bad policy; it is the policy.
In the aftermath of a revolt from mostly liberal Upper West Siders and their allies, Drinkwater made her hateful Twitter feed private (see gallery of Twitter screenshots in the article). But she is still afflicting. This time in Flatbush. Homeless advocates and city law paint this phenomenon as “fair share,” but it is increasingly, “More, more, more!” when it comes to homeless shelters.
In a recent presentation at a CB14 meeting (7:22 in the video below), Drinkwater insisted that the massive ramp up in shelters was because of previous administrations.
This is nonsense.
Homelessness has exploded under her and Banks’s watch, and UWS friends like Maria Danzilo originally from Midwood who already fought them is concerned about what this means for us and other areas in NYC who are now being afflicted.
Steve Banks gleefully boasts about how wins all its litigations against neighborhoods & communities. Not exactly cool to brag about silencing voices when you have all the power. My Mom (may she RIP) would disdainfully call this braggadocio https://t.co/Hlixe0Ip5C
— Maria Danzilo (@Maria4Dist6)
And because of decarceration, which Drinkwater is a major fan of, putting the mentally ill and former prisoners in residential neighborhoods with transit hubs increases crime and harassment when straphangers can’t escape easily.
Pharmacies are closing their doors on the UWS because of theft.
The Amsterdam Ave and 70th street will be closing on 11/15. Workers say due to constant theft – they now have to fine new employment, and patrons a new pharmacy, not easy for seniors. Thx alot for afflicting us all. https://t.co/vDZpT8Hx5o
— West Side Community Organization (@westsideco_org)
Council Member Farah Louis is reviewing the proposed shelter. It should be noted that one of the reasons Inna Vernikov won her election in the next district over with such strong margins was her fearless success in fighting off a dubiously placed new shelter on Neptune Avenue in her district, even before she was elected.
Will the Flatbush and Midwood community rise to defend itself now before the shelter is operational? Or will we wait until it is already here, and be subjected to the demonization by Drinkwater and her woke allies who will gleefully and aggressively smear us for having the audacious “privilege” of demanding a safe and sanitized place to live and travel?