DNAinfo/Jeanmarie Evelly
HUNTERS POINT — Street cleaning teams from The Doe Fund will be hitting more streets in Long Island City, expanding their reach in the neighborhood to include Dutch Kills as well as an underpass near the Pulaski Bridge.
City Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer is allocating more than $133,000 to the organization — which provides jobs to formerly homeless and incarcerated people through its Ready, Willing Able program — to expand its services in his district.
The Doe Fund’s workers started cleaning streets in Woodside two years ago and Van Bramer provided funding last summer to bring the cleaning teams to Vernon Boulevard and 11th Street in Hunters Point.
The increased funding this year will bring cleaners three days a week to Jackson Avenue between Vernon Boulevard and 45th Avenue, including the area around MoMA PS1; an extra block of 11th Street to expand service to 44th Drive; the side streets between Vernon Boulevard and 11th Street from 45th to 50th Avenues; and 5th Street between Borden Avenue and 46th Avenue.
It includes an underpass beneath the Pulaski Bridge on 50th Avenue that’s a popular route for residents heading to the nearby 7 train station or to the waterfront, but which has been plagued by trash and pigeon droppings.
“This area has been incredibly dirty,” Van Bramer said. “It has been an area that’s been hard to clean and hard to get various agencies to focus on it.”
Workers from The Doe Fund started cleaning the street earlier this week and locals said they can see the difference.
“It was like night and day compared to what it had been before,” said Tamar Weinstock, who lives nearby.
The Doe Fund will also begin cleaning streets in Dutch Kills further north for the first time as part of the increased funding, according to Van Bramer, though details on where have yet to be announced.
