A luxury Upper East Side hotel has spent years serving as a quiet homeless shelter, and neighbors say the city cut them out of the loop entirely.
The Bentley Hotel, a 21-story tower at 500 E. 62nd St. where rooms once fetched more than $200 a night, is housing 197 people under a taxpayer-funded contract, according to Highland Park Community Development Corporation, the Brooklyn nonprofit running the operation, Upper East Site first reported.
It is not the building’s first rodeo as a shelter. The hotel took in homeless New Yorkers displaced from crowded congregate shelters back in May 2020, part of the city’s pandemic-era push to spread people out and slow the spread of COVID-19 inside dorm-style facilities.
The Bentley resurfaced as a shelter in 2023, this time designated a Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Center for asylum seekers arriving amid the migrant crisis, with Highland Park landing a $32 million contract to run it, Upper East Site reported…