New York City plans to move 110 single homeless men into a converted motel in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, with no criminal background checks, displacing 55 families already housed there and drawing sharp opposition from residents and a local Republican councilwoman who says the city is putting children at risk.
The conversion of the former Gold Star Inn on Emmons Avenue could begin as early as next week, the New York Post reported. The shelter sits directly across the street from Lew Fidler Park, a popular family spot with a playground. The Department of Homeless Services has confirmed that no criminal background vetting will take place on the incoming residents.
That confirmation prompted City Councilwoman Inna Vernikov, a Brooklyn Republican, to fire off a letter this week to the Department of Social Services demanding answers. Her warning was blunt:
"The Department of Homeless Services confirmed that no criminal background vetting will take place, leaving room for potential sex offenders and convicted felons to come in contact with our children."
Vernikov added in the same letter that the move would be "devastating for the surrounding neighborhood and community," citing the pattern cities have seen when single adult male shelters land in residential areas: "loitering, drugs, and criminal activity."
The shelter conversion arrives against a grim backdrop. NYPD data for the 61st Precinct, the command covering Sheepshead Bay, show shooting incidents up 400 percent so far in 2026. Retail theft has risen 10 percent. Reports of rape have doubled, from eight at the same point last year to 16.
None of those increases have been formally linked to the existing shelter. But residents who spoke to the Post drew a straight line between the facility and the deterioration they see every day.
Fahad, a 30-year-old plumber from nearby Brighton Beach who gave only his first name, described what the area looks like now:
"People are breaking into cars, people are destroying the park, taking their pants down in the park. It used to be very quiet."
Ginny, a 50-year-old resident who declined to give her last name, zeroed in on the vetting gap. "Not checking the background is not very diligent of the city," she said. "How can say they are protecting children when they allow that? There are also elderly people who can be targets."
Olga Adynets, 37, a neighbor originally from Moscow, told the Post she already has reason to worry. "Someone who was just released from prison is now living at the shelter," she said. "I don't want it to get worse. I'm worried."
The city's response to these concerns has been bureaucratic boilerplate. A DSS spokesperson told the Post that "the agency continues to address the prevalent stigma against single adult men experiencing homelessness" and that it "implements good neighbor policies while maintaining open lines of communication with the community to address any concerns as they arise."
Residents dealing with car break-ins and public indecency across from a children's playground may find the word "stigma" an odd priority.
The operator running the Gold Star Inn shelter is BHRAGS, a Brooklyn-based nonprofit that pivoted from homecare services to shelter operations in 2022. Its track record raises its own set of questions, serious ones.
In March, federal prosecutors indicted BHRAGS executive director Roberto Samedy and former board chairman Jean Ronald Tirelus on charges of raking in $1.3 million in illicit payments, wire fraud, and embezzlement. The federal corruption probe surrounding the nonprofit has also touched prominent Democrats alleged to have accepted bribes in connection with BHRAGS, though the full scope of those allegations remains unclear.
Despite the indictments, Mayor Zohran Mamdani's administration handed BHRAGS nearly $200 million in new city contracts in June. City officials told the Post they blamed former Mayor Eric Adams' administration for originally bringing BHRAGS into the fold to handle the migrant crisis. They said they had gotten rid of "bad actors" and that the nonprofit now operates under new leadership, with its shelter portfolio slashed from nine facilities to four.
Whether cutting a scandal-plagued operator's portfolio by half, while simultaneously awarding it $200 million, constitutes accountability is a question the administration has not convincingly answered.
The Sheepshead Bay fight is not an isolated episode. Mayor Mamdani's approach to homeless housing has generated friction across the city, with neighborhoods pushing back against placements they say were made without adequate community input or safety measures.
In one notable case, East Village residents, a neighborhood that backed Mamdani by 40 points, went so far as to file a lawsuit to block a homeless shelter in their own backyard. When even your strongest supporters are suing you, the policy has a credibility problem.
The broader record of city-managed shelter and migrant housing has produced its own grim headlines. A sixteen-month-old girl was found dead at a Manhattan hotel housing migrants, raising hard questions about oversight and conditions inside these facilities.
And Mamdani's willingness to defy federal authority on immigration, including his refusal to enforce a Supreme Court ruling on deportation protections, has established a pattern: an administration that treats ideological posture as more important than the safety and order its residents actually need.
One detail in this story deserves more attention than it has received. The 55 families currently living at the Gold Star Inn shelter are being displaced to make room for the 110 single men. A city spokesperson said the conversion reflects a shift in the homeless population, more single men, fewer families entering the system, and that the city prefers to place families in traditional shelters rather than hotels.
That rationale may be administratively tidy. But it means the city is actively removing families, including children, from a facility and replacing them with a population it refuses to screen for criminal history. The same administration that invokes "stigma" when asked about background checks is making a deliberate choice to prioritize volume over vetting.
Where the 55 displaced families will go remains unclear. The city has not publicly detailed their relocation plans.
The core issue in Sheepshead Bay is not whether homeless men deserve shelter. It is whether a city government has any obligation to know who it is placing across the street from a children's playground, and whether taxpayers funding nearly $200 million in contracts to a federally indicted nonprofit are getting anything resembling competent governance in return.
Criminal background screening is not an exotic demand. It is a basic, common-sense safeguard that most private landlords apply as a matter of routine. The Department of Homeless Services' refusal to conduct it, paired with the city's dismissal of resident concerns as "stigma," reveals an administration that has confused ideology with policy.
Councilwoman Vernikov's letter frames the stakes clearly: sex offenders and convicted felons could end up yards from a playground, and the city has chosen not to check. The DSS response, promising "good neighbor policies" and "open lines of communication", reads like a press release drafted by someone who does not live on Emmons Avenue.
The residents of Sheepshead Bay are not asking for anything radical. They want to know who is moving in next door. The city's answer, effectively, is: we don't know, and we don't plan to find out.
When government treats its own citizens' safety as less important than avoiding the appearance of judgment, it has stopped governing and started performing.
