Parents from the Peck Slip School in the Seaport, along with local residents, are raising funds to block the city’s Safe Haven shelter coming this fall to 320 Pearl, the building adjacent to the school. Over the summer they have posted a GoFundMe for legal fees, which so far has raised $12,000 towards a $20,000 goal. There’s also a change.org petition with 2000 signatures so far.

The shelter was announced a week before school was let out via a letter to Community Board 1 from the city’s Department of Social Services, timing that raised the ire of parents, since the PTA would not be able to meet over the summer. That forced them to create a separate group, PASS, for PeckSlip Advocates for School Safety, in order to organize. They have since written several letters from the new organization to the city asking for more information on the shelter, and encouraged their parent body to write hundreds more — all to no avail.

“They are not communicating with the community at all — we know nothing that we haven’t researched ourselves,” said Peggy Bilse, the treasurer of the Peck Slip PTA and a board member of PASS. She added that the DSS representative who attended the July 23 CB1 full board meeting could not answer any of their questions either.

But the group is moving forward. They have engaged an attorney to explore legal options and continue to research the plans, which they say go back as far as January, when the city entered the contract with Breaking Ground — the non-profit that will run the shelter.

Read more here, but the facility is what is called a “low barrier” shelter, meaning that residents are not required to be sober or follow many typical shelter rules, including a curfew. The parent group is largely opposed to this type of shelter. It will not only share a wall with the school, but the entrance will be just feet from where kids line up at the start of every day.

The group also learned from Community Board 1 that the shelter will have two smoking areas that abut school windows, which they said was confirmed by Breaking Ground. (See the photo below.)

They also challenged the DSS’ statement to me that Breaking Ground has experience running Safe Haven shelters next to schools. In fact they have one, on West 83rd, across the street from PS 9 and the Center School, according to ILoveTheUpperWestside. But the parents argue that the 83rd Street site is across the street and around the corner from the entrance to the school on Columbus.

As a group, PASS is not opposed to another kind of shelter at this location. A family shelter would be appropriate, Peggy Bilse said, due to close proximity to the school, or another that Breaking Ground also administers — residences designed specifically for low-income seniors, many of whom are chronically homeless.

“They are saying Safe Haven shelters serve New York’s most vulnerable. To us, New York’s most vulnerable are our children,” she said. “That is our number one concern.”

Community Board 1 will next address the shelter at its Sept. 18 Quality of Life Committee meeting at 6p.