A judge in Manhattan Supreme Court has ordered that the city drop its plans for a homeless shelter at 320 Pearl, a former Hampton Inn adjacent to the Peck Slip School.

The petition — an Article 78 proceeding that allows citizens to challenge city decisions — asked the court to annul the city’s decision to site the Safe Haven shelter. Judge Arthur Engoron rejected the city’s motions to dismiss and ruled in favor of the PeckSlip Advocates for School Safety, an advocacy group that was formed by parents and neighbors to fight the proposal.

In his ruling, the judge acknowledged that the city has enshrined the right to shelter for unhoused individuals and families, but the approval process for this siting was “significantly and fatally flawed.”

“In light of [the Department of Homeless Service’s] description of Safe Haven Shelters as a ‘low barrier program’ and Safe Haven Shelter’s lack of rules ‘against residents using drugs, alcohol or weapons[,]’ petitioner’s contention that the Shelter will likely bring crime, sex offenders, drugs and paraphernalia such as syringes, ‘around the corner on Peck Slip street, which is the open-air playground for P.S. 343 during the school day’ is more than merely speculative, as respondents contend.,” he wrote in his decision.

“There are two, eight-hundred pound gorillas in the room,” Engoron wrote in the ruling. “The first is the fact that the proposal would place a shelter for troubled adults adjacent to a school for three-to-eleven-year-olds. . . The second eight-hundred pound gorilla is the City’s cavalier attitude towards fulfilling its obligation to demonstrate that it seriously considered the siting criteria.” He also noted that the city failed to consider the effects of the shelter’s smoking section on the school.

The city’s own siting criteria require that the facility be compatible with existing facilities and programs in the immediate area. And the city’s Fair Share criteria require that the city consider “all potential negative effects” — social, economic and environmental — on surrounding areas.

As of the ruling, the city is enjoined from opening or operating a homeless shelter at 320 Pearl, absent the filing of a new Fair Share statement that complies with the law.