Inside the Notorious Privately Run Homeless Shelter That Costs NYC Millions

After five years in a two-bedroom apartment at a privately run homeless shelter in Prospect Lefferts Gardens, Merlinda Fernandez is getting her own apartment at Marcus Garvey Village in Brownsville. The low-income complex has problems with crime, concentrated poverty, and aggressive policing, but Fernandez can’t wait to get there, and to be able to have birthday parties for her six children.

“It’s my own apartment,” she said, when asked how it would change her life. “Here you don’t have freedom.”