Homeless Men Lose Court Battle to Stay in Upper West Side Hotel

The city said the men at the Lucerne could stay there until a larger move of homeless people out of hotels amid the reopening.

New York City was cleared to move dozens of homeless men out of an Upper West Side hotel called the Lucerne, after a state appeals court on Thursday rejected an effort to stop the city from relocating them to another hotel downtown. The decision resolved a nearly yearlong battle that had become a flash point for questions about race, class and tolerance in an affluent liberal enclave. But it comes at a time when the city is reopening for tourism and already making plans to move over 9,000 homeless people out of hotels and back into barrackslike group shelters. Hotels have been used as emergency shelters since early in the pandemic to stem the spread of the coronavirus.