Neighbors near a brand-new women's shelter on West 59th Street say the block has turned chaotic since it opened, with ambulances showing up as often as four times a day and children steering clear of the playground next door. The 200-bed facility at 537 West 59th Street houses women dealing with addiction and serious mental illness, and residents say the daily reality looks nothing like what the city promised when it broke ground.
The shelter sits directly beside the Gertrude Ederle Recreation Center and Playground, a public bathhouse lot the city acquired in 1906 and renamed in 2013 for the Upper West Side Olympic swimmer who became the first woman to swim the English Channel, according to NYC Parks. As reported by the New York Post, longtime resident Stacy Lefton says she has watched a woman inject herself in the street and pass out, and described another woman who spent hours outside without pants or underwear. Lefton, who has lived in the area for 17 years, said women fight outside the shelter and that when she raised concerns to shelter workers, she was told to call 911.
Lefton said she has since called 911 herself to report a woman who needed help. A teacher who spoke to the outlet said shelter residents have been spotted naked, that syringes have turned up in the park, and that residents have set up makeshift camps on the sidewalk — prompting the teacher to now take students to a playground farther away rather than risk Ederle. One local resident described seeing a shelter resident dressed as a devil, and another wearing only a towel and ski goggles. A woman named Heather told the paper people are shooting up and vomiting in the playground, and families are scared to use it as a result.
A Half-Billion-Dollar Project Missing Its Clinic
The shelter, built by developer The Hudson Companies and designed by Dattner Architects, rose on a site Project Renewal bought for $19.3 million in February 2022, after the property previously housed a community media facility, according to New York YIMBY. The finished building runs nine stories and 44,845 square feet. City plans originally called for a 1,500-square-foot on-site clinic offering primary care, behavioral health services and other treatment for both shelter residents and the surrounding community, but that clinic has not opened. A Department of Social Services spokesperson said it is still waiting on government approvals, even as the agency maintains the site is equipped with clinicians, case managers and other social-services staff.
Councilwoman Gale Brewer said she has not received an opening date for the clinic and wants answers about when it will finally start operating. Brewer, who has met with Project Renewal and the city Department of Social Services, said plainly that she was not supportive of the shelter and wants the population potentially adjusted to include women with less intensive needs. Her office has received dozens of complaints about conditions at the site since it opened in May, per the same account.
Years of Warnings Before the Doors Opened
The fight over this address goes back further than the shelter's opening. The Department of Homeless Services first selected 537 West 59th Street in January 2021 as a permanent replacement for temporary pandemic-era hotel shelters, including the contentious Lucerne Hotel arrangement also run by Project Renewal, according to Patch. At the time, officials pitched the facility as staffed with more than 70 social workers, nurses, psychiatrists and round-the-clock security backed by 70 cameras, with priority beds reserved for homeless individuals from Manhattan's Community District 7, West Side Rag reported.
By May 2023, a coalition called Friends of Ederle Playground had gathered more than 2,300 petition signatures opposing the shelter's proximity to the playground and seven nearby schools, culminating in a September 2023 protest where Brewer called for the site to become permanent affordable housing instead, as reported by FOX 5 New York. That same year, the group asked the city Department of Investigation to probe the shelter contract. Not everyone in the neighborhood agreed with the pushback — the housing advocacy group Open Hearts Initiative organized counter-protests defending the shelter, arguing the Upper West Side needed emergency beds with on-site supportive services alongside any affordable housing push.
Formal mitigation requests followed in 2022 and 2023, with residents asking the city to cap the shelter at 100 beds, restrict street-level clinic access to residents only, and move outdoor smoking areas away from the playground, according to official letters reviewed by the NYC Council. The de Blasio administration ultimately awarded the shelter operator a $500 million, 40-year contract during its final months in office in 2023.
A Citywide Pattern for the Shelter Operator
Project Renewal, the nonprofit running the site, traces its roots to 1967, when it launched on the Bowery as the Manhattan Bowery Project — a pilot of the Vera Institute that created New York City's first voluntary medical detox program as an alternative to arrest. The organization has since grown into a major citywide social-service provider serving more than 10,000 clients a year and received nearly $104 million in government grants during fiscal year 2025. A Project Renewal spokesperson did not respond to the Post's inquiry for this story.
West 59th Street is not the only address where Project Renewal has run into neighborhood resistance this year. Hoodline previously reported on a Manhattan Supreme Court injunction that halted the group's planned men's intake hub at 8 East 3rd Street in the East Village, while similar opposition has flared in Crown Heights and Ditmas Park over other Project Renewal shelter contracts. The organization has also opened a very different kind of project this year — a Midtown East development combining a women's shelter, permanent low-income apartments and an on-site health clinic alongside its long-running culinary workforce training program, part of a May 2026 affordable housing lottery Hoodline covered separately.
