Low-Income Residents In 39-Unit NYC Apartment Building Threatened w/ Homelessness As Local Faith-Based Non-Profit Landlord Seeks To Give Them All The Boot To (Purportedly) Convert Premises Into ... A Homeless Shelter???

In Astoria, Queens, the New York Daily News reports:

• A faith-based Queens nonprofit is trying to boot low-income renters into the street in the midst of the holiday season — in the hopes of converting their building into a homeless shelter, residents told the Daily News.
  
  The New York School of Urban Ministries in Astoria wants tenants out of the 46th St. building as soon as possible and has been using underhanded methods to speed up the process, residents say.
  
  Pastor Peter DeArruda, the executive vice president of the ministry, sent notices out last month informing tenants they must vacate the building by Dec. 31.
  
  “I will never understand how a Christian group can dump longstanding and faithful residents in the middle of the winter and during the holidays,” said 39-year-old actress Amy Burgmaier, who has lived at the address on and off for two years.
  
  The misleading letters, some of which threaten legal action, would only be the first step of eviction and residents don’t have to leave until all legal proceedings have taken place.
  
  But tenants were told the three-story, 39-unit brick building that serves as a dormitory as well as housing for missionaries and others was slated to be used as a homeless shelter as soon as January.
  
  Three tenants have already moved out.
  
  “It makes no sense that they are moving in a homeless shelter but they are causing other people to be homeless,” Burgmaier said.

For more, see Christian non-profit evicts Queens apartment residents to convert building into homeless shelter.

See also, Astoria residents facing eviction without due process.