A new Brooklyn shelter offers unhoused families with kids a chance at more stability

• A new Brooklyn shelter offers apartment-style transitional housing for formerly homeless families.
• The building could be turned into permanent housing if shelter demand falls.
• Notably, the shelter faced little opposition from the community, its owner said.

Across the street from Brooklyn's leafy Fort Greene Park, dozens of formerly homeless families with children have found new temporary homes.

Since October, Marvina Brinkman, 35, and her four children have stayed in a one-bedroom unit at the Fort Greene Family Center as Brinkman got on her feet and looked for permanent housing. She said the Center has helped her kids get into new schools, arranged transportation, and helped her look for permanent housing.

"This is the first shelter I've been in that I've actually gotten real help for me and my children," she said.

This week, Brinkman and her children are moving into a permanent home a few miles away in Brownsville, Brooklyn.

The $73 million facility, which opened last September, looks like any other gray brick Brooklyn apartment tower. That's until you glimpse the 11-story mural of a little girl balancing books, a globe, and a teddy bear on a box of school supplies. The image, painted by the muralist and painter DaFlemingo, sets the building apart from most other homeless shelters, which often attempt to blend into neighborhoods that don't always want them there.

The Center also departs from traditional shelters in its interior design. All of the building's studios and one- and two-bedroom units function as private living spaces, each with its own bathroom and kitchen. They look like standard, albeit small, New York City apartments.

"When you're on the inside, it looks like a normal apartment building," Brinkman said.

Unlike most homeless shelters in the city, many of which are repurposed commercial buildings or hotels, the building was designed to create transitional housing that could easily be transformed into permanent affordable housing, according to Westhab, the nonprofit that owns and operates the Fort Greene shelter — along with many others in the city and state.

A spokesperson for the city's Department of Social Services said the building "exemplifies the city's ongoing commitment to transforming the shelter system," by allowing the nonprofit provider to both own and operate a purpose-built building.

Critics of New York City's homeless shelter system say that without more supportive permanent housing for people experiencing homelessness or living on the brink of it, the city's unhoused population will only continue to balloon, feeding a bloated system that too often prioritizes temporary support over long-term solutions.

If demand for shelters diminishes, the Center's units could be turned into permanent, affordable housing.

"These families who live here now — we could give them leases," Richard Nightingale, CEO of Westhab, said during a recent tour of the building.

Anti-shelter NIMBYism

Anti-development sentiment — also known as "Not in my backyard" or NIMBYism — can be tricky for housing advocates and developers to navigate. Homeless shelters tend to provoke the fiercest NIMBY backlash of all.

Westhab has been caught in a series of high-pitched battles over its shelters across the city. It took four years and a protracted legal fight to open its shelter for 80 unhoused men on West 58th Street — also known as Billionaires' Row — in Manhattan.

In Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, local homeowners and residents organized months of demonstrations against a 169-unit shelter for families with children. Residents erected an encampment next to the project site, and Westhab sued protesters to stop them from blocking access to the construction site. While the shelter, which is moving forward, is designed to house families, critics say the building shouldn't be located near schools or even in a residential neighborhood.

"Homeless shelters don't belong in our residential neighborhoods, period," State Sen. Stephen Chan said last year. "Sheepshead Bay is not a dumping ground. It is a neighborhood. It is our home to elderly, to children and families."

Nightingale's response: "Why would it be inappropriate to put a family building next to a school? It'd be incredibly appropriate."

When the Sheepshead Bay shelter is finished, it will be the first in the area — part of a long-term effort by the City government to more equally distribute homeless shelters across the city.

The Fort Greene shelter sits across the street from a public school and a library. It's minutes from multiple subway and bus lines, and has great access to jobs in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Notably, the shelter faced virtually no local opposition.

"There's no reason why affluent neighborhoods should be able to restrict these things because they lawyer up and a lower-income Black and Brown neighborhood gets its 19th shelter," Nightingale said.