Oct. 24, 2016 By Hannah Wulkan
The Department of Homeless Services quickly moved a man out of a temporary homeless shelter when residents began pointing out he was on the state sex offender registry.
State Sen. Jose Peralta sent out a statement on Thursday warning the community of the presence of a Level 2 sex offender staying in the Holiday Inn Express in Corona at 113-10 Horace Harding Expressway that has been partially converted in to a homeless shelter.
The possible presence of a sex offender in this hotel not only endangers the lives of homeless families that were moved into this hotel as well, but also children from the nearby P.S. 14 and P.S. 28 schools, the High School for the Arts and Business, the community, park-goers and tourists,” Peralta said in his statement. “We are calling on DHS [Department of Homeless Services] to immediately remove this individual from the Holiday Inn Express. We are also asking DHS to implement a mechanism to screen for possible sex offenders before they move them next to children and schools.”
The registry listed Bruce Nevil, a level-2 sex offender, as living at the hotel, but by Friday his address had been switched to 400 East 30th Street, which is the address of the Bellevue Men’s Shelter, according to the Queens Courier.
On Friday, Peralta sent out another statement, saying, ““I want to thank the Department of Homeless Services and the Administration for quickly and swiftly removing a sex offender from the Holiday Inn Express in Corona, a hotel partially converted into a family homeless shelter. It is my hope that the City agency improves its vetting practice to make sure this kind of situation does not happen again.”
When asked to comment on the incident, DHS spokeswoman Lauren Gray stated, “The Department of Homeless Services follows all applicable laws with regard to placement,” but elected not to say anything further.
Featured Events
2 Comments
“Sex offender found at homeless shelter” Next thing ya know they”ll find gambling at Ricks.
End the criminal enterprise of the welfare hotels. If people can no longer afford to live here then they need to move to a place they can afford just like the hundreds of thousands of our hard working friends and relatives have done for hundreds of years. That’s capitalism and market economics. It is costing tax payers nearly $4,000.00 a month to house an individual in these hotels. $4,000.00 X 60,000 people = $240,000,000.00 a month = $2.8 billion a year and nobody even gets a home. This is a massive amount of money. this scheme exploits the poor and tax payer while making hotel owners very wealthy.