FIGHTING AN OLD FIGHT

WEDGED between the Columbia, a luxury high-rise, and the Royal York, a
rundown single-room-occupancy hotel, is a flower and fruit garden. This
little patch, known as the Lotus Garden, is perched atop a parking garage
on West 97th Street near Broadway, and although the soil is less than four
feet deep, it supports two koi ponds, a handsome peach tree, a spray of
rose bushes and herbs, and some Boston ivy.

But not everything in this community garden is so lovely. On a recent
visit, its president, Mary Sherman Parsons, rattled off a list of items she
has found there in recent months: hypodermic needles, crack vials, razor
blades, dirty toilet paper. Earlier this year, she said, a 4-year-old boy
stepped on one of the needles and had to undergo a month of debilitating
treatment to stave off H.I.V. infection.

"It's disgusting," Ms. Parsons said as she reached into a garbage can
labeled Dangerous Trash and removed a plastic Baggie containing a rotting
condom. "The bathrooms don't work," she added, pointing to windows of the
Royal York that overlook a quince tree. "So they throw it out the window."

The Lotus Garden is a symbol of a profound change roiling the Upper West
Side: the re-emergence of the single-room occupancy hotel, or S.R.O.

In the 1960's and 70's, the Upper West Side had perhaps the city's largest
concentration of S.R.O.'s, occupied largely by a poor, troubled and
sometimes violent population. Growing frustration with the problems these
buildings engendered, combined with an increasingly robust economy, helped
reduce their numbers sharply. But in the last year, faced with a
mushrooming homeless population, the city has resumed placing homeless
people, many of them single people with AIDS, in these buildings.

Although S.R.O.'s are found throughout the city, residents here contend
that an unfair number are clustered in their neighborhood. The police in
the 24th Precinct, which includes the Upper West Side between 86th and
110th Streets, report that some two dozen S.R.O. shelters fall within the
precinct's boundaries, more than in any other in the city. Upper West
Siders say they must dodge not baby strollers but aggressive panhandlers,
strung-out prostitutes and combative drug dealers.

There is another issue. With the deep tradition of liberalism and social
activism on the Upper West Side, S.R.O.'s present a special problem. This
recent chapter has sparked a hard look at the community's current character.

"The neighborhood has become very upscale and whiter and less tolerant,"
said Councilman Philip Reed, who represents the area. "There's a younger
generation of people who didn't fight the old fights. And it doesn't sound
like there's a lot of tolerance in their voices."

Two Residents, Two Worlds

Tom Sunderland and Mildred Ortega live on either side of the Lotus Garden,
but they might as well come from different planets.

Mr. Sunderland, a criminal justice professor who owns a co-op in the
Columbia, lives in a building with a concierge, a health club and other
trappings of prosperity. A three-bedroom unit with a sweeping view of the
Hudson can fetch nearly $1 million.

Ms. Ortega, a Venezuelan immigrant who lives in the Royal York, makes her
home in a structure with dingy linoleum floors, broken windows and
cockroaches. Her apartment, no bigger than a laundry room, costs $150 a week.

For years, such contrasts have coexisted on the Upper West Side with
relatively little friction. "We have public housing here, and we have no
problems with that," said Mr. Sunderland, who has a ponytail and volunteers
as an auxiliary police officer. "Things were great."

Ms. Ortega also feels at home, even if she can't afford the $3 lattes at
the dozen Starbucks nearby. "I'm a housekeeper," she said proudly, as she
eyed the bigger apartments across the street. "I work for them, and they
work for Wall Street."

But this balance has been shifting.

For about a year, the city's HIV/AIDS Services Administration has taken
over 35 rooms at the Royal York and filled them with homeless AIDS
patients. Many have histories of drug abuse and prostitution. Some are
frail and nearly bedridden. All are left to their own devices for most of
the day, and are wholly unsupervised at night. The 60 permanent residents
complain of noise and chaos and say the ruckus is especially bad after 2
a.m., when drug dealers and prostitutes roam the hallways looking for
customers, money and a good time. The most that Ms. Ortega and others can
do is tack a handwritten notice to the door, declaring, "I do not buy or
sell drugs, thanks."

Six blocks north, at the Malibu Hotel on West 103rd Street, the city has
taken over about 100 rooms for homeless adults with AIDS since last April.
Ever since, neighbors there say, the Malibu has been a mecca for drug
dealers and prostitutes. Gangs of young men and women have been seen
loitering outside the Malibu and along the Broadway mall, asking for money
and harassing passers-by.

"There's feces in the gutter," said Marlene Lee, a court reporter who lives
across the street. "My doorman has seen guys urinating against our building
and lighting up crack pipes. Then there was a mugging that I personally
heard at 1:30 in the morning. Terrible, terrible screams. It was a delivery
guy who was beaten in the face with a battery held in a sock. His screams
were like an animal in agony."

Complaints have also been directed at the Frant Hotel on West 101st Street
and two other S.R.O.'s where the city's Department of Homeless Services has
quietly set up shelters with beds for 88 homeless people. The problems
there appear minor compared with those at the AIDS shelters, in part
because these buildings house families, not single adults. Still, the rooms
are tiny and there are no common areas.

Neighborhood residents are also angry because of what they see as an issue
of equity. The Upper West Side, they feel, is again being asked to bear a
disproportionate share of the city's homeless burden.

"We get all the S.R.O.'s," said Lisa Lehr, co-chairwoman of the West 90's
and West 100's Neighborhood Coalition. "You won't find them in the Silk
Stocking district."

Figures from the city show a more complex picture. Only 8 of the 199 S.R.O.
shelters used by the homeless services agency - just 4 percent - are on the
Upper West Side. And of the 54 S.R.O. shelters used by the AIDS services
agency, only 9 - 17 percent - are there. But because those nine AIDS sites
are so large, they house 28 percent of the 2,266 AIDS patients currently in
S.R.O. shelters. These figures do not include more than 10 S.R.O.'s for the
homeless, run by nonprofit agencies, between West 72nd and West 111th
Streets. (The total number of sites is hard to ascertain because of
confidentially rules, overlap among city agencies and the number of groups
and agencies involved in running sites.)

Evolution of a Troubled Place

Paradoxically, many Upper West Side S.R.O.'s were once reputable, even
glamorous apartment houses with evocative names, like the Royal York.
During and after World War II, these buildings were carved into single
rooms to accommodate the single men who flooded into the city.

For low-income New Yorkers, S.R.O.'s were often the best alternative to
homelessness. By the late 60's and into the 1970's, however, increasing
crime, much of it drug-related, led to a worsening of conditions inside
these buildings. In response, the city encouraged landlords to reconvert
more than 100,000 S.R.O. units to full-service apartments, a policy that
has haunted the city ever since. The move aggravated a homeless crisis that
forced the city to reverse course in 1985 and impose a moratorium on
conversions.

The city put the newly homeless in the leftover S.R.O.'s, using them as
welfare hotels. With the crack cocaine epidemic in full swing, these
buildings became places of destitution and danger, with drug addicts
mingling with the elderly and the mentally unstable. By the late 1980's,
AIDS had created another housing crisis, and the city responded by placing
homeless AIDS patients in these buildings, creating daunting health and
safety issues that the city and the S.R.O.'s were ill equipped to handle.

Upper West Siders were outraged. According to a 1995 report by Community
Board 7, which covers the neighborhood, the city squeezed nearly 45 percent
of the homeless AIDS population into the blocks between West 92nd and West
112th Streets. When Deputy Mayor Fran Reiter toured the Riverside Hotel on
West 109th Street during this period, the police made her wear a
bulletproof vest.

"The conditions were horrible, filthy and infested, not the kind of
environment a healthy person should be in, let alone a sick person," Ms.
Reiter recalled recently. Soon after her visit, the city imposed a cap on
the number of homeless AIDS patients on the Upper West Side.

The image of S.R.O.'s changed yet again during the recent economic boom.
Cushioned by a budget surplus, the city began reinventing the S.R.O. by
joining with nonprofit groups to build and renovate units that offered more
comprehensive services. Instead of "welfare hotels," the buildings would be
called "supportive" S.R.O.'s. The concept proved popular. Euclid Hall, for
example, a 292-room hotel on West 86th Street that is run by the nonprofit
West Side Federation for Senior Housing and includes a drug treatment
center, is widely regarded as a neighborhood amenity.

At the same time, a tourist boom was creating a new market for midpriced
boutique hotels. Landlords of S.R.O.'s quickly retiled moldy bathrooms,
installed air-conditioners and replaced long-term tenants with backpackers
willing to pay $150 a night for a room that had netted $10 a day. By 1996,
more than half of the Upper West Side's 21 privately owned S.R.O.'s had
been converted to tourist hotels or student hostels. The Malibu, once
reviled for its drug-infested squalor, was promoted online as a "stylish
and comfortable" budget hotel on the "trendy Upper West Side."

Within the last year, the pendulum has swung back once more. The owners of
at least seven of these S.R.O.'s, including the Malibu and the Royal York,
have asked the city to fill their empty beds with homeless people. While
supportive S.R.O.'s remain, there is nothing about the new institutions
that echoes that older model.

"After Sept. 11, the whole hotel market collapsed," said Alan Lapes, who
owns six S.R.O.'s that have been turned into homeless shelters. "Occupancy
was down to 20 to 30 percent. You need at least 65 to 70 percent to break
even. I was losing money like crazy."

At one of his S.R.O.'s, the Ellington Hotel on West 111th Street, the city
pays up to $85 a night - more than $2,500 a month - to place a homeless
family in a cubicle-size room containing three beds, a closet-size bathroom
and a one-piece kitchen unit.

"This is my new business," Mr. Lapes said. "I'm looking for more locations."

Fueling that business is a swelling homeless population. The homeless
services agency now works with some 37,000 people, the highest in three
years, said Linda I. Gibbs, the agency's commissioner. Her office receives
100 new requests for housing every day.

The Liberal Dilemma

On the Upper West Side, where a person can make a career out of attending
community meetings, the debate about S.R.O.'s has returned to center stage.
There are endless town hall gatherings, detailed position papers and new
task forces, all devoted to the issue. Community Board 7, which disbanded
its S.R.O. Task Force seven years ago, is considering reactivating it.

A typical discussion took place a few weeks ago at a meeting of the
community board's Health and Human Services Committee. The two dozen
residents who gathered in the board's offices on West 87th Street seemed on
edge, unsure whether the city officials who had been invited would actually
show up.

"Who wants to buy in a neighborhood with all these S.R.O.'s?" one
middle-aged woman demanded. "My property value is possibly and probably
being lowered."

Another person chimed in: "The Upper West Side has been too accepting. We
can be liberal, but we don't have to be stupid."

Half the audience nodded in agreement. The other half, including many
longtime S.R.O. residents, sat quietly on their hands.

The tone of the meeting was evidence that in a subtle but significant way,
the debate over S.R.O.'s has shifted.

"Nimbyism on the West Side is a fairly recent phenomenon," said Terry Poe,
a tenant organizer at the West Side S.R.O. Law Project, run by the
Goddard-Riverside Community Center. "Before, the concern was about driving
out long-term, permanent S.R.O. residents. The feeling now is that their
neighborhood is being ruined by a high concentration of problematic people."

Part of the change springs from the community's good fortune during the
recent economic boom. Luxury housing, upscale restaurants and chain stores
pushed north of 96th Street, a traditional dividing line. Stockbrokers
joined teachers and writers on co-op boards and in block associations.

The return of S.R.O.'s also magnified existing worries when the economy
turned down. Residents already sensed a rise in panhandling, homelessness
and drug dealing. At the same time, the number of officers in the 24th
Precinct has shrunk to 140, down from 240 several years ago.

"What you have is more of a dichotomy," said Kate Krusko, a real estate
broker who has lived on West 97th Street for two decades. "The housing
stock has improved, and now you have this other layer of homeless shelters
coming in. The contrast is greater."

A vocal minority at the community meeting sought to remind their fellow
residents of the neighborhood's compassionate roots. This group sees no
conflict between wanting a better quality of life for oneself and the same
for S.R.O. residents. The real issue, they assert, is not the S.R.O.'s but
the lack of social services.

Daniel O'Donnell, the area's incoming state assemblyman, is among those
trying to reframe the debate.

"My major concern has to do with the quality of social services being
provided," said Mr. O'Donnell, who lives across the street from the
Ellington. "It's noisier at night than it used to be. But when there's no
communal space, or a place for kids to play, that tends to spill out onto
the street."

When Maryanne Schretzman, a deputy commissioner at the city's homeless
services agency, finally arrived, she sought to assure residents that the
city did not regard the Upper West Side as a dumping ground for S.R.O.
shelters. "Every community is dealing with this," she said at the meeting.
"We have record numbers of homeless people entering the system."

The audience was skeptical. "Why not put them where the rich people live?"
demanded Luba Tcheresky of West End Avenue, who says she has never felt
less safe. "Why not the Upper East Side?"