Won questions Dalton on Borden showers, roof leaks, and offline beds

Thank you so much, Chair Marano.

Thank you to all the agencies that have come to testify.

It's so good to see you all.

My name is Julie Wan.

I'm currently the city council member representing the only veteran shelter in the entire city of New York.

For the last five years, we have had the same amount of complaints.

And even before I was elected, we had the same amount of complaints, and it's extremely disturbing.

In addition, I saw, I appreciate your testimony where you address some of the concerns that we have heard for years about this shelter.

So as you have seen in the news, we've had a lot of shelter residents complain about the lack of privacy in the bathrooms.

Currently in the only veteran shelter, year after year for over 10 years, people have complained that they have to shower communally.

Could you imagine if you have served in war and now they want you to be butt naked in front of each other every time you want to shower?

That is currently what the system is and people have complained for years and every single year we have had lip service that there would be partitions put up, that there would be partitions put up, that there would be partitions put up.

And especially those who are struggling with mental illness, substance abuse, they're forced to either not shower.

Or shower in nudity in front of each other.

That is no way to treat a human being with dignity.

That is inhumane.

And I see in the testimony that there is a commitment to have partitions put up within the next six to eight weeks.

So we will continue to follow up with our shelter residents who want to have privacy and decency so that they can shower with dignity.

So we will wait for the next two months, starting from today, to make sure that finally that they will have privacy to shower.

Next, we have physically.

seen and the press has seen how there is an incredible amount of leakage from the roof.

So I see that there's a commitment to make sure that there is some sort of roof and skylight replacement.

And it says that it's going to be from 2027 to 2029.

So could you help me understand how many beds are offline because of

the lack of capital repairs that were needed because it says that those who are affected by the leak will not be able to stay there and they will stay offline.

How many beds are we talking about and the only shelter that we have in the city?

Thank you for that question, and I share the concern.

and your approach to the requirement of privacy for our veterans.

So I do apologize on behalf of all of those veterans that those partitions had not been in place for so long, but we in this administration

saw that and are committed to working with ICL to get that done.

And I know you all will hold us accountable to do that over the timeline we proposed.

So right now, we have a vendor who is consistently assessing and making roof repairs.

And then we have tarps where we cannot patch those repairs.

And there is some water coming into the facility.

There are seven tarps as of right now, and we monitor that on a very regular basis and will continue to do so until the roof and skylight repair is complete.

As we proceed with the construction, we can keep the council updated, and we will do everything in our control to have minimal disruption to the facility.

My understanding, and we can get back to you and make sure that this is correct, it's really only the replacement of the skylights that would take any units offline, which we can do in a

kind of staged way, such that we would not have a significant number of...

units offline.

And so we can come back as the construction begins and give updates on that.

But I don't think we expect significant disruption while we replace the roof.

So how many beds are affected by the leak?

There are seven beds affected by the leak right now.

And that means that there are not veterans.

Those beds are offline.

Okay.

And those seven beds will be offline for two years minimum.

Can you also help me understand?

And that may be correct, but we also are making regular repairs.

And so I think like sometimes it's five and sometimes it's seven.

And, you know, like it goes up and down a little bit as we make repairs to a roof that clearly needs to be replaced.

Can you help me understand?

Is this the same contractor that has had this contract for this capital repair in the previous years?

Or is this a new contractor?

Who's responsible?

I believe we're just actually moving into procurement.

And I'll see if the deputy commissioner knows.

But I think, and we can make sure to get back to you, I think it is a different, we don't know who the vendor will be yet, I think, for the roof repair and for the full roof replacement.

And so I don't think we could actually answer the question of whether there's a different contract.

Can I have more time, please?

One more, please, and then we'll come back to you, just because we have a lot of our colleagues that want to.

Understood.