Locals turn on Asian women's shelter.(feature)(New York Asian Women's Center)

On a quiet street in Brooklyn, a typical brownstone opened its doors some months ago as a shelter for battered Asian immigrant women. There were only small indications--a tricycle out in the courtyard, an Asian woman walking into the house. The silence presented a sharp contrast to the heated conflict that raged through much of last year and delayed the opening by more than six months. While the mostly Italian-American neighbors maintain that race wasn't a factor, domestic violence advocates worry about xenophobic overtones as well as potential precedents. It is quite common for group homes of all sorts to spark opposition from residents before they open, but this is the only known NIMBY campaign against a battered women's shelter.

Last summer, residents of Carroll Gardens, once solidly an Italian-America neighborhood, became alarmed when a construction crew consisting of Chinese immigrants began doing renovations on a house on a quiet residential street. According to Buddy Scotto, the owner of a grand funeral home that sometimes serves as community space, neighbors questioned the crew to learn that "there was going to be some kind of program coming in." Further investigation revealed that the New York Asian Women's Center (NYAWC) had planned to open a four-family dwelling for battered women and their children.

Neighbors formed an organization to stop the shelter from opening, generating one of the most acrimonious conflicts to hit the domestic violence field nationwide. The Concerned Citizens of Carroll Gardens, claiming up to 300 members, made publicizing the shelter's location their first priority. Member Danny Contreras put the address on his website, which no longer seems to exist, and other shelter opponents put up fliers, posters and banners at community meetings. Contreras could not be reached for this article, but in January he defended the revelations to the New York Post as a matter of timing--the shelter was still under renovation, so it was all right to reveal the plan. In a letter to the funders of the NYAWC, the group wrote, "The confidentiality of the shelter's location has been breached ... Please ask yourselves if private funding and public tax dollars should support an organization entrusted to protect at-risk clients when it endangers those clients." Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes rejected this argument, saying that he would actively prosecute if the publicity led to any violence.

These efforts were punctuated by two rallies of dozens of people picketing in front of the house protesting the shelter opening, threats to publish the shelter location in the Asian ethnic press, a failed effort to get a restraining order to prevent the shelter opening and a lawsuit challenging the shelter's zoning compliance. But not all residents agreed with Concerned Citizens, with some complaining that it gave the neighborhood a bad name, and others even calling for boycotts of businesses that advertised on Contreras' website.

Concerned Citizens claimed that it was not motivated by racism, but by crime prevention and localism. Buddy Scotto, who is not a member of Concerned Citizens and whose funeral home provided a neutral space during the conflict, puts it down to the mistrust neighbors have for outside institutions. Scotto says about the Italian American community that, "they're family-and extended-family-oriented people. That's the only thing they really have any confidence in. Suddenly someone next door is coming in with something that isn't a family. It's some kind of institution. If [these women are] in trouble with their husbands, where are their father, their brother, their cousins, their aunts, their uncles? Why isn't their family taking care of this?"

Some residents feared the shelter would draw violent men to the neighborhood. "There was talk that these men are going to come after the women with guns and we won't be able to let our children out on the street," says local Assemblywoman Joan Millman.

But Kyung Hoon, chairwoman of the NYAWC, counters that in the 14 years the organization has operated shelters, there hasn't been one violent incident. Legally, NYAWC did nothing wrong by following the mandate to open the facility quietly and ensure the confidentiality of the site, as service providers have learned to do over decades. In fact, police departments tend ...