The New York Post’s headline writers didn’t hold back: “Woke NYC bookstore that lured strung-out junkies with freebies faces possible eviction”. The tabloid reported that the landlord of the Bluestockings Cooperative bookstore on New York’s Lower East Side was threatening eviction unless the store stopped operating as a “medical facility”.
Bluestockings is a historic trans- and queer-owned bookstore and has been providing, alongside revolutionary and feminist literature, a place for local residents to use a bathroom and pick up hygiene products, snacks, items of clothing and harm -reduction supplies, including the anti-opioid overdose agent Narcan and fentanyl test-strips.
It’s these services that have drawn the ire of wealthy neighbours and the bookshop’s landlord, who has demanded the store stop “permitting homeless individuals to use the basement restroom”.
The notice is the culmination of a year in which the bookstore has been caught in the crossfire of competing visions of neighborhood and community.
Bluestockings moved to Suffolk Street during the pandemic after losing its space on nearby Allen Street. It’s an area of the city where mental health and drug dependency issues are common and social services are stretched.
The bookstore began offering basic outreach services, such as Narcan training and a bathroom, but local critics argued that by trying to help the unhoused community on the block, it exacerbated problems of discarded drug paraphernalia and antisocial behavior.
“I think the neighbors made a connection between us moving here and seeing more drug use,” says Raquel Espasande, a member of the Bluestockings collective. “But I think they would have seen the same increase if we hadn’t been here, and I think we’ve saved some lives on the block.”
Tensions have been running particularly hot over the past few months, with the bookshop accusing residents of throwing buckets of water, ice and cans down from apartments above on to the street.
Two community board meetings on the issue ended in anger and confrontation; there has been at least one petition calling for the store to close.
“People moving into historical neighborhoods like the Lower East Side aren’t prepared for the poverty of the city and the fentanyl epidemic,” says Myles Smutney, a community activist who recently ran for an ambassadorial district leader position for the area. “They don’t want to come out of the house and see it. They just wanted to displace these people. It was ‘not on my block’.”
The cooperative wrote to the neighboring community in a bid to ease tensions, writing: “We understand that a lot of people have a hard time being confronted with the reality of homelessness and poverty. We urge you to join us to let that uncomfortability bring us together in treating our neighbors, unhoused and not, with dignity and respect.”
That didn’t help. One resident of the street, according to Bluestockings, used a BB gun to harass unhoused people. “Community members are making each other aware, and apparently he’s a terrible shot,” the bookshop wrote in a message to staff.
The New York state department of health made a surprise visit to the store in August, following complaints from residents and several elected officials, but found that “the presence of an OOPP [opioid overdose prevention program, handing out narcan and offering training] administered by Bluestockings … is not causing quality of life issues on the block.”
Many who oppose the bookshop’s policies say they’re simply looking out for the safety of local residents, including vulnerable populations and the bookshop staff. The Clemente Center, a Puerto Rican and Latinx cultural centre running in the area since 1993, says drug users have been using in nearby galleries and in front of a children’s theatre. Staff says the community isn’t geared to deal with the issue.
“There’s nothing we can do as an arts center to address societal problems,” says the Clemente’s Andrea Gordillo. “We have compassion for our neighbors, but as a cultural and community center with a mission, we can’t spend all our time dealing with harm reduction and housing strategies for folks on our streets. We try to strike a balance between being compassionate and the health and safety of our staff.”
On Suffolk, many of the unhoused community said Bluestockings had helped them. “They’ll give you what they have. I’ve used the test strips and I’ve used the Narcan on a few people,” says Clarence, 61, who has been on the streets for five years and is waiting for a bed in a safe haven.
But the attitude of some residents is uncharitable, he says. “Everybody thinks we just want cash. Sometimes we need other help – places to go, information, socks, underwear. Some of us want to be out here but a lot of us don’t. When they see one person doing bad, they blame all the homeless people for it.”
Like a lot of current disputes in the city, the battle over Bluestockings is what you want it to be – messy and without any simple answers. “The bookstore has been on the Lower East Side since 1999, and it’s never been unusual for drug users or homeless people to be around,” says Espasande. What is unusual, until relatively recently, is paying $4,000 in rent for a studio apartment.
“If you’re choosing to pay that for a studio, and you don’t research the neighborhood, that’s not really an issue that needs to be solved by kicking out the people who have been here for decades before you,” Espasande adds. “The people who are being criminalized and touted as a new issue have always been here, trying to survive.”
Susan Stetzer, district manager of Manhattan community board 3, which covers Suffolk Street, says the situation is hardly unique. “There’s a mentality around treating drug users and homeless like a rat infestation,” she says. “But these are people with lives. We condemn the violence toward them but I also understand that there are needs from the community to the right to be safe on the streets.”
