The guests arrived at the Lucerne Hotel, two blocks from Central Park, carrying their belongings, stepping off buses and filling the hotel’s empty rooms, which typically cost more than $200 a night. They were not tourists nor business travelers but residents of homeless shelters whom the city sent to the Lucerne to contain the spread of the coronavirus in the crowded shelter system. Over three days, 283 men moved into the hotel. Their arrival has become a flash point and a test of values for the Upper West Side — a neighborhood with a reputation as one of the most liberal enclaves in New York and in the entire country. The city had already moved shelter residents, including some women, in May into three other Upper West Side hotels — the Park West, the Belleclaire and the Belnord — and the neighborhood is now home to about 730 homeless people transferred during the outbreak.

Source: New York Times August 18, 2020 09:01 UTC