Photo

Disasters can make for strange alliances. They can also squeeze groups together that have a natural affinity, like the Ali Forney Center and the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center.

Building Blocks How the city looks and feels — and why it got that way.

Photo

The Ali Forney Center provides 77 beds a night in eight buildings in Brooklyn and Queens for homeless youths who are gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender. For nearly eight years, it has also run a weekday drop-in center at Flemister House, 527 West 22nd Street. There, homeless youths could apply for housing, get a free meal, take a shower, find a clean T-shirt, pick up a toothbrush, see a doctor or nurse or counselor, and just be themselves for a few hours without fear of attack or harassment.

Flemister House, a residence for those with H.I.V. and AIDS, was flooded during Hurricane Sandy, as it had been during Tropical Storm Irene. Its 50 residents, evacuated before the storm, had to be housed elsewhere. The boilers, electrical switchgear and telephone system were destroyed. Mold began to grow. There is no saying exactly when needed repairs will be finished, said the Rev. James O. Stallings, president of the board at Flemister House and regional minister of the American Baptist Churches of Metro New York, which sponsors the residence.

This is the second time in 14 months that Flemister House has lost its boilers and switchgear to a storm, he said, and consideration is now being given to moving that critical equipment to the roof. How that will be financed is unclear at the moment.

None of Ali Forney’s housing sites were touched by the storm. But as the first week dragged on, apprehensions grew about the drop-in center. It wasn’t until Nov. 2 that Steven Gordon, the program director, was able to visit the windowless space — flashlight in hand, mask over mouth and nose — after jogging to Manhattan from his home in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn.

“When I turned the key in the door, I couldn’t open it, because the floor had been raised,” he recalled. After Mr. Gordon and a colleague pushed their way in, they quickly grasped that the 1,200-square-foot center was a total loss — “knocked and rocked,” in Mr. Gordon’s words. Water had reached a height of at least four feet, submerging desks, immersing files and other records, and tossing or upending a refrigerator, a freezer and portable air-conditioners. Food, clothing, telephones, computers and medical equipment were ruined.

Carl Siciliano, the founder and executive director of the Ali Forney Center (which he named for a young man who was killed on the streets in 1997), said, “We anticipated that there would be damage, but not so much that the space would be rendered unusable.” On his Facebook page that night, Mr. Siciliano posted an update: “My worst fears for our Day Center on 22nd Street, half a block from the Hudson River, were true.” The Joe.My.God. blog picked up the news quickly.

Photo

Among the first outsiders to learn about the drop-in center’s plight was Glennda Testone, executive director of the gay community center at 208 West 13th Street. She and her partner, Jama Shelton, a part-time coordinator at Ali Forney, started receiving text messages about the crisis and saw the growing discussion on Facebook. Ms. Testone reached out to Mr. Siciliano.

“I have an idea,” she said.

Ms. Testone said the 13th Street center would donate space in its building, a former public school, for interim use by the Ali Forney Center. “We had to get creative and roll up our sleeves, figuring out how to put in phones, computers, Internet service, a confidential counseling room,” she said in an interview last week. “We wanted them to get up and running as quickly as possible. We didn’t want money to get in the way.”

On Monday, Mr. Gordon was shown Room 212. He liked it immediately. (He certainly didn’t mind that it had windows.) Two days later, the space was set up with desks, partitions and equipment. An arrangement was made to keep the medical services going through the Institute for Family Health at 16 East 16th Street, which had been the provider at the 22nd Street site.

Photo

On Nov. 8, the new drop-in space at the 13th Street center opened at the customary hour of 10 a.m. “At 10:04, we had two kids in here,” Mr. Gordon said. “When I saw that they had found us this quickly, there was a sigh of relief.”

A week later, a dozen young people could be found at lunchtime in Room 212. In their exuberant clamor, they only sounded like four dozen. Mr. Gordon said the transition was not especially traumatic for a group accustomed to sleeping in subways and exchanging sex for basic amenities. “They’re used to loss and change, very sadly,” he said.

Dennis, 20, was among those having lunch outside Mr. Gordon’s impromptu office. He would not give his last name but proudly gave the title of the fantasy novel on which he is working, “The Sword of Time and Space.” Dennis seemed unperturbed by what had happened to the old center. “I knew it was bound to be gone in a hurricane,” he said.

Even before the storm, the Ali Forney Center signed a lease for a new center, with 9,000 square feet, on the second floor of a building on the northeast corner of St. Nicholas Avenue and West 125th Street. However, this project was dealt a setback when state officials said that more stringent medical licensing requirements would compel the center to change the layout of the space. That meant rerouting plumbing lines, adding $250,000 in costs to what was planned as a $100,000 renovation. “I was reeling,” Mr. Siciliano said.

And then came the reaction to the story of the Chelsea flood. “If there’s a silver lining,” Mr. Siciliano said, “it’s that so many people have donated that it’s resolved the issue of how I’m going to pay to renovate the space.” He said the Harlem center should be fully open in March 2013. He hopes it can begin offering basic services by Christmas.