By Winnie Hu
The New York Times
The huge, turreted castle that looms over Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn is the first stopover for many of New York City’s homeless men. Some call it Castle Grayskull after the forbidding fortress in the Masters of the Universe stories.
The building, a former armory, was turned into the Bedford-Atlantic Men’s Shelter in the early 1980s and serves as an assessment center and gateway to the city’s network of homeless services. As many as 350 men at a time are evaluated there for treatment programs and other shelters.
Shantal Gadson works the 4-p.m.-to-midnight shift, handing out dinner, bed linens and mail. A line of men sometimes wait at the guarded entrance, which is equipped with a metal detector and an X-ray machine. A sign posted on the wall warns: “Assaulting social services personnel is a felony punishable by up to 7 years in prison.”
“As I come to work,” Ms. Gadson, 36, said, “I think, you just never know who you’re dealing with on a daily basis.”
As New York City has struggled with a crisis in homelessness in recent years, shelter workers like Ms. Gadson go about helping those who have no one else, sometimes risking their own safety to do so. The fatal shooting in April of Ana Charle — the first shelter worker known to be killed by someone in the city’s shelter system — has focused attention on these employees in recent months and prompted city officials to review security measures at the city’s 256 homeless shelters, some of which are operated by nonprofit providers.
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