110 Unvetted Men, an Indicted Operator, and $186 Million:
How City Hall Flipped a Sheepshead Bay Motel.
For roughly a year, a converted motel on Emmons Avenue in Sheepshead Bay — directly across the street from Lew Fidler Park and the playground that opened there in 2021 — has housed 55 homeless families. On July 12, the New York Post reported that the city is emptying it. All 55 families are being relocated, and the Department of Homeless Services is converting the building into a shelter for 110 single adult men, with move-in beginning as early as next week.
“Unvetted” is not an editorial flourish. In a letter to the Department of Social Services, Council Member Inna Vernikov (R-Brooklyn) says DHS itself confirmed that no criminal background vetting will take place on the men being moved in. The city’s rationale for the swap, per the Post’s reporting: fewer families are entering the shelter system, and more single adult men need beds.
Then there is the operator. BHRAGS Home Care Inc., the Brooklyn nonprofit running the site, is the organization whose former board chairman and executive director were federally indicted in March, accused of pocketing more than $1.3 million from its city-funded operations. All four defendants in that case are presumed innocent. The city’s answer, delivered in June under Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D), was to keep BHRAGS in the portfolio anyway — with roughly $186 million in new contracts and an independent monitor looking over its shoulder.
- 110 — single adult men moving into the converted Emmons Avenue motel, as early as the week of July 13 · Source: New York Post; Fox News
- 55 families — being relocated out of the same building to make room · Source: New York Post
- 0 — criminal background checks DHS confirmed it will run on the incoming men, per CM Inna Vernikov's (R) letter to DSS · Source: New York Post; Fox News
- $1.3M+ — allegedly pocketed by BHRAGS' former board chairman and executive director, per the March 2026 federal indictment — defendants presumed innocent · Source: DOJ, Eastern District of New York
- ~$186M — in new city contracts the Mamdani administration awarded BHRAGS in June 2026, after the indictment · Source: Gothamist
The building is the former Gold Star Inn, on Emmons Avenue across from Lew Fidler Park. Since mid-2025 it has operated as a family shelter, housing 55 households a short walk from the Sheepshead Bay waterfront — an arrangement the neighborhood, by most accounts, had absorbed without much friction. Families with children across from a playground is a configuration that makes intuitive sense. What DHS is replacing it with does not, at least to the people who live there: 110 single adult men, in the same building, across from the same playground.
The timeline is what turned a portfolio decision into a neighborhood revolt. Move-in could begin as early as the week of July 13 — days after residents learned the plan existed, from a newspaper rather than from the city. Under the consent decree in Callahan v. Carey, the 1981 case that established New York’s right to shelter, the city must produce a bed for every eligible adult who asks. Where those beds go is a decision City Hall can make largely on its own — no community board vote, no public hearing required.
The document doing the heaviest lifting in this story is Vernikov’s letter to DSS Commissioner Erin Dalton, Mayor Mamdani’s February 2026 appointee, because it contains the city’s own admission. The council member did not characterize the vetting policy; she reported what the agency told her.
“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.”
Council Member Inna Vernikov (R-Brooklyn), letter to the Department of Social Services
To be precise about what that means: the men are not accused of anything, and homelessness is not a crime. But the city will not know whether any of the 110 arrivals has a violent record, because it has chosen not to check — a policy choice, not a legal requirement. Asked about the neighborhood’s objections, the Department of Social Services did not dispute the no-vetting confirmation. It reframed the objection itself as prejudice.
“The agency continues to address the prevalent stigma against single adult men experiencing homelessness.”
NYC Department of Social Services statement
On Fox News, the story slotted into a running national argument about what big-city governments owe the neighborhoods they site shelters in — and what happens politically when the answer is “an explanation after the fact.”
On March 31, 2026, federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York unsealed an indictment against BHRAGS Home Care Inc.’s former board chairman, Jean Ronald Tirelus, and its executive director, Roberto Samedy — wire fraud, embezzlement, bribery, and money-laundering conspiracy. According to the indictment, the two pocketed more than $1.3 million between August 2020 and January 2024, including roughly $800,000 routed through a fake “affordable housing joint venture.” Two co-defendants, Edouardo St. Fort, a retired NYPD sergeant whose firm held a $3 million DHS security contract, and Miguel Jorge, are charged in an alleged kickback arrangement. All four are presumed innocent; the case is pending.
Who: BHRAGS Home Care Inc.’s former board chairman Jean Ronald Tirelus and executive director Roberto Samedy, plus co-defendants Edouardo St. Fort (retired NYPD sergeant) and Miguel Jorge.
Charges: wire fraud, embezzlement, bribery, and money-laundering conspiracy, unsealed March 31, 2026 in the Eastern District of New York.
The alleged take: more than $1.3 million between August 2020 and January 2024, including roughly $800,000 through a fake “affordable housing joint venture,” plus kickbacks tied to a $3 million DHS security contract.
The city’s response: nine active DHS contracts worth $200 million-plus at the time of indictment — and roughly $186 million in new contracts awarded in June 2026, under a DOI-selected independent monitor, with BHRAGS’ shelter portfolio consolidated from nine sites to four.
Status: pending. Every defendant is presumed innocent unless and until convicted.
The indictment did not cost BHRAGS its city business. In June, the Mamdani administration moved ahead with roughly $186 million in new contracts — a $136 million adult-shelter contract that began July 1, up $42 million from the prior $94 million deal, plus $50 million for social services in hotel shelters — while installing an independent monitor selected by the Department of Investigation and shrinking BHRAGS’ shelter portfolio from nine sites to four. The Emmons Avenue motel made the cut. Eleven days after that $136 million contract went live, the Post broke the news of the flip.
The probe’s reported reach extends further, and here the labels matter. According to amNY, NY1, and ABC7, investigators examined whether Council Member Farah Louis (D-Brooklyn), her sister Debbie Louis — an aide to Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) now on leave — and Edu Hermelyn, husband of Brooklyn Democratic Party chair Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, received benefits from the scheme. None of the three has been charged, and none is accused of wrongdoing here.
The Emmons Avenue flip is one move in a citywide reshuffle. In May, Gothamist reported that the Mamdani administration’s new Brooklyn hotel shelters cost $156 per person per night, against a $145.13 average at traditional shelters — a premium DHS spokesman Nicholas Jacobelli defended as the price of adding capacity fast, and one that drew criticism from Council Member Rita Joseph (D-Brooklyn). At that hotel rate, 110 beds works out to roughly $6.26 million a year — our calculation, not a published contract figure, and actual terms for this site may differ.
The pressure behind the reshuffle is real. As of the July 8 DHS daily report, 82,890 people were sleeping in DHS shelters, including 25,514 single adults — 18,169 of them men. The closure of the 850-bed Bellevue mega-shelter forced hundreds of those men into new placements, and the city’s adopted budget added $160 million for non-asylum DHS operations, $150 million of it for single-adult capacity. Somebody’s neighborhood was always going to absorb those beds. The question Sheepshead Bay is asking is why the answer was a family shelter across from a playground, on a week’s notice, with no background checks.
Mayor Mamdani’s broader homelessness record frames the fight. Sworn in January 1, he broke with the Adams administration by vowing to stop clearing homeless encampments — then reversed himself on February 18 and 19, after New Yorkers died of cold exposure on the street, and appointed Erin Dalton to run DSS a week later. The whiplash has made his shelter decisions a national political target.
President Donald Trump (R) has made Mamdani’s New York a recurring foil. After Mamdani-backed candidates swept the city’s June primaries, he posted twice on Truth Social, as reported by The Hill.
America the Beautiful will NEVER be a Communist Country!!
via The Hill, June 2026
Mayor Mamdani pulled through 3 solid Communists, and has received loud and universal applause from the Fake News Media.
via The Hill, June 2026
Sheepshead Bay has run this play before. Through the spring of 2025, the neighborhood fought Westhab’s proposed 169-family shelter at 2134 Coyle Street — a battle in which Community Board 15 chair Theresa Scavo accused the city of a “bait and switch,” and which pulled together a cross-party coalition: State Sen. Steve Chan (R), Assemblyman Michael Novakhov (R), Assemblywoman Jaime Williams (D), and Council Member Mercedes Narcisse (D). Fourteen months later, the same community boards and the same elected officials are staring at a second surprise siting — this one with a week’s notice.
Residents near the motel already attribute a change in the block to the shelter population, fairly or not. One of them, a 30-year-old plumber named Fahad, put it to reporters this way.
“People are breaking into cars, people are destroying the park, taking their pants down in the park. It used to be very quiet.”
Fahad, 30, plumber and Sheepshead Bay resident, quoted by the New York Post and Fox News
The precinct numbers cut both ways, and honesty requires both halves. Year-to-date in the NYPD’s 61st Precinct, shootings have risen from one to five, rapes have doubled to 16, and retail theft is up 10 percent — but overall crime is down 7 percent. Sheepshead Bay is not a war zone; it is a statistically improving neighborhood whose residents believe a no-notice, no-vetting decision is about to test that trajectory. Vernikov is demanding the city halt the conversion. Unless it does, the vans arrive next week.
Zohran Mamdani (D) — Mayor of New York City since January 1, 2026. His administration kept BHRAGS on roughly $186 million in new contracts after the indictment and owns the conversion decision.
Erin Dalton — Commissioner, Department of Social Services (appointed by Mamdani, February 2026). Her agency confirmed no criminal background vetting will take place.
Inna Vernikov (R) — Council Member for the district. Leading the opposition and demanding a halt.
Kathy Hochul (D) — Governor of New York. An aide in her office — uncharged — is on leave amid the BHRAGS probe’s reported reach.
The city confirmed, in writing, that it will move 110 men it has not background-checked into a motel across from a Brooklyn playground — as early as next week, displacing 55 families to do it. The nonprofit running the site saw its former leaders federally indicted in March for allegedly pocketing $1.3 million; they are presumed innocent, and City Hall handed the organization roughly $186 million in new contracts anyway. Overall crime in the precinct is down 7 percent. Whether it stays that way is now Sheepshead Bay’s open question — and City Hall’s open liability.
