The Hidden Price of Crisis: Emergency Calls at Veterans Shelter May Have Cost Taxpayers More Than $90 Million

NEW YORK CITY -- For nearly two decades, the Borden Avenue Veterans Residence in Long Island City has served as New York City's only Department of Veterans Affairs Grant and Per Diem (GPD) transitional housing program. Designed to help veterans move from homelessness to permanent housing, the program is intended to provide a safe, stable, and recovery-oriented environment. Yet an analysis of emergency response data suggests that the financial cost of repeated crises at the facility may have imposed a substantial burden on New York City taxpayers.

Between August 2024 and December 2025, NYPD records identified approximately 1,365 emergency calls associated with 21-10 Borden Avenue. Those calls included assaults, emotionally disturbed persons, suspected overdoses, serious medical emergencies, disputes, injuries, harassment complaints, and other incidents requiring responses from the NYPD, FDNY Emergency Medical Services, hospitals, and the criminal justice system.

Millions Spent Responding to Emergencies

Based on conservative estimates, the combined cost of police responses, ambulance dispatches, emergency room treatment, inpatient psychiatric care, arrest processing, court proceedings, and short-term detention likely ranged between $4 million and $8 million during the sixteen-month period analyzed, with a midpoint estimate of approximately $6 million. Annualized, that represents roughly $4.5 million each year in emergency-response-related public expenditures.

Assuming an average census of approximately 220 veterans, emergency-response costs alone equate to more than $20,000 per resident annually. These estimates do not include the cost of operating the shelter itself, Veterans Affairs healthcare, disability compensation, Medicaid, Medicare, supportive services, or other publicly funded programs that serve residents.

If the level of emergency activity observed during the study period has been generally representative of conditions throughout the facility's history, the cumulative taxpayer burden over 20 years could reasonably be projected between $67 million and $135 million, with a midpoint estimate approaching $90 million. While projections over long periods involve uncertainty, they illustrate the potential financial impact that repeated emergencies can have on public resources.

A $214 Million Nonprofit

The Borden Avenue Veterans Residence is operated by the Institute for Community Living (ICL), one of New York's largest nonprofit behavioral health organizations. According to publicly available IRS Form 990 information compiled by ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer, ICL reported approximately $214.3 million in annual revenue during its 2025 reporting period. The same filing shows that eight senior executives received more than $2.73 million in combined compensation and other benefits.

Those financial figures stand in sharp contrast to continuing concerns raised by veterans regarding safety, sanitation, security, and the frequency of emergency incidents at the facility. Executive compensation, by itself, does not establish wrongdoing or indicate how resources are allocated within a large nonprofit organization. However, the disparity raises legitimate questions about organizational priorities and whether sufficient resources are being invested directly into front-line operations, facility maintenance, security, behavioral health staffing, and recovery-oriented services for veterans residing at Borden Avenue.

The Burden on the NYPD 108th Precinct

The impact extends well beyond dollars. Every emergency call requires police officers, supervisors, EMS personnel, and, in many cases, hospital staff to respond to a single location. Hundreds of responses originating from one building place sustained demands on the NYPD's 108th Precinct, which serves Long Island City, Sunnyside, Woodside, and Maspeth.

Every officer dispatched to Borden Avenue is an officer temporarily unavailable to respond to burglaries, domestic violence incidents, traffic collisions, or other emergencies elsewhere in the community. Likewise, ambulances responding repeatedly to the facility are unavailable for other medical emergencies throughout western Queens. Although emergency services exist to answer these calls, the concentration of incidents at a single address raises legitimate questions about resource allocation and whether preventable crises are placing avoidable demands on public safety agencies.

The Human Cost of an Unsafe Environment

The financial burden is only part of the story. Many veterans entering transitional housing already live with service-connected disabilities, including post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injuries, depression, anxiety, or substance use disorders. Transitional housing is intended to provide an environment where recovery can begin — not one where veterans continue to experience instability and fear.

Repeated exposure to violence, assaults, behavioral health crises, overdoses, and constant emergency activity may increase stress and undermine recovery. Clinical research has associated prolonged exposure to unsafe or chronically stressful environments with worsening symptoms of PTSD, anxiety, depression, sleep disorders, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and other stress-related illnesses. While the effects differ from person to person and cannot be assumed in any individual case, these are recognized risks that warrant careful consideration when evaluating the quality of a transitional housing program.

For veterans who have already experienced combat, military trauma, or other significant life events, months spent in an environment marked by frequent police activity and repeated emergencies may reinforce feelings of hypervigilance and insecurity rather than helping restore stability and independence.

A Call for Accountability

The Department of Veterans Affairs Grant and Per Diem program was established to help veterans achieve permanent housing through structured, supportive transitional services. Emergency responses will always occur in programs serving vulnerable populations. However, when a single facility generates more than 1,300 emergency calls in sixteen months, projects to tens of millions of dollars in long-term public costs, and is operated by an organization with more than $214 million in annual revenue, policymakers have a responsibility to ask whether the program is meeting its intended purpose and whether public funds are being directed toward the services that matter most to veterans.

The debate surrounding Borden Avenue is no longer solely about shelter conditions. It is also about fiscal stewardship, public safety, and whether New York City is investing in a model that reduces crises or one that repeatedly requires police officers, ambulances, emergency departments, and taxpayers to bear the cost of responding after those crises occur. After twenty years of operation, an independent evaluation of program outcomes, public expenditures, financial priorities, and veteran well-being is warranted to determine whether the current model delivers the level of safety, accountability, and outcomes that veterans—and taxpayers—have every right to expect.

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Timothy Pena is a service-connected disabled Navy veteran for PTSD and has written about his experiences with mental health, homelessness, and the judicial system. Pena initially visited NYC to collaborate on a documentary for veteran suicide but decided to stay after realizing he would rather be homeless in NYC than dead in Phoenix.