chicapoquita's flickr

The fight against the homeless shelter proposed for 400 McGuinness Boulevard gained momentum this week when local residents lawyered up and formed a corporation to strengthen their efforts against the shelter. According to DNAinfo, the Greenpoint Neighborhood Coalition, Inc. officially formed last month with the help of lawyer Andrew Stern.

The group believes that the shelter “threatens to ruin our current lifestyle and the safety and quality of the neighborhood.”

As we posted in February, Greenpoint’s homeless population is in a uniquely challenging position because the city has no Polish language programs available to help them. The problem is so bad that the city offered local churches $100,000 to provide shelter on cold winter nights, but no churches were interested. At the time, five homeless people had died in fifteen months.

GoogleMaps

If you live in Greenpoint and commute to Manhattan or hang out in Williamsburg, you’re probably familiar with the dangers of crossing McGuinness Boulevard. Drivers race down it like it’s the Autobahn, while long traffic lights make pedestrians eager to cross whenever they get a chance.

Luckily for pedestrians, state assemblyman Joe Lentol is pushing for cameras that will catch speeding drivers. A recent survey reports that  two-thirds of drivers on McGuinness speed and between 2005 and 2009, vehicles hit thirteen cyclists and forty-four pedestrians. Lentol introduced a bill last week, The Brooklyn Paper reports.