NYC ACC: Anyone Know How to Run an Animal Shelter?
ACC has been closed to intakes for more than a week, telling the press they "don't know" what to do.
The Scoop New York is a website and newsletter covering the movement for a true no-kill New York State, from BUF to BK. NYC ACC KILLS, published by TSNY, enumerates and memorializes adoptable cats and dogs who were exterminated by Animal Care Centers of New York City.
Headlines from Buffalo to Brooklyn
It’s July 26, 2025. This is The Weekly Poop, Emergency Recess Edition.
This week, CEO Risa Weinstock and her underlings at Animal Care Centers of New York City made a production of failing at their stated jobs, and the city press corps all but martyred them for it.
The latest demonstration of wanton uselessness began on Friday the 18th, when ACC announced it would again shut its doors to intakes, for at least the second time this year and despite the fact that the contractor’s completely transparent, totally above-board deal with the city prescribes an open admission system — i.e. no animals turned away.
“This is not a decision we take lightly, but we cannot take any more owner surrenders,” read ACC’s statement unilaterally exempting itself from the terms of its $1.4B, 34-year contract with city taxpayers. “With over 1,000 pets in our care we are at a breaking point.”
The system was still shut to intakes as of early Saturday afternoon, eight days after the initial announcement.
ACC was also closed to intakes in January, though the duration of that closure is unknown, since DOH — the city health department, which on paper serves an ACC oversight function but IRL just wants to get along — and ACC do not notify New Yorkers when intakes resume.
There were at least two such intake pauses in 2024, with no public announcements upon reopening.
If a New Yorker were to try calling ACC to ask when the system might revert to the DOH/ACC version of normal, good luck getting answers. ACC staff so despise New Yorkers that DOH/ACC keep the ACC public relations phone number hidden from the public, going so far as to deny freedom of information requests for it.
None of this is new. As yours truly wrote during a July 2024 ACC meltdown:
[P]eople who want to adopt from ACC consistently face obstacles that seem meant to discourage them. ACC maintains hours that make visits difficult for people who, say, have day jobs. The Staten Island branch is open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. five days a week, and is closed completely on Mondays and Tuesdays. The Manhattan and Brooklyn locations are open six hours a day. All ACC facilities were once open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. seven days a week.
Would-be adopters who are able to visit during open hours are liable to run into other ACC-constructed barriers. Recent visitors to ACC’s Brooklyn and Manhattan facilities reported being barred from entry without a completed adoption application, which they were forced to fill out while remaining outside, one of them in the rain. When an adoptable animal is at risk of being put down, ACC may or may not inform the outside world ahead of time. And New Yorkers have for years spoken of how hard it can be to even get an ACC employee on the phone.
There have been a few developments over the past year. For one, ACC’s Brooklyn outpost is now closed for renovations, leaving the borough without agency services. The Staten Island location, according to ACC, now has adoption hours every day, including noon to 4:00 on Mondays and Tuesdays, for a total of 38 adoption hours weekly. As in Manhattan, the year-old Queens detainment facility is open for adoptions 42 hours per week.
So: Since the pandemic, DOH and ACC have cut adoption hours by at least a fourth, depending on location. New Yorkers who wish to adopt from ACC can’t count on catching a mobile adoption event, since scheduling is erratic and ACC sometimes hosts just one mobile event during a given weekend. New Yorkers interested in adopting from an ACC brick and mortar facility must check location hours, as they are borough-dependent and subject to change. Upon arrival during adoption hours, the tenor if not success of the adoption process largely hinges on who’s working at ACC that day, their mood and general disposition.
To believe ACC has a capacity crisis, you have to ignore ACC’s own data, which indicate the number of intakes has dropped by more than half in the last decade. To believe DOH and ACC are making a good faith plea for New Yorkers’ help, you must overlook the sneering contempt exhibited by those same agencies toward New Yorkers for the past 30 years.
The press corps, for its part, wants to believe:
Were you aware ACC had never closed to intakes before last week? That ACC “euthanizes” about 100 animals per month — “often” because death row animals are hopelessly ill or lethally dangerous? That ACC has an intake “tipping point” that may not be exceeded, lest the doors to each ACC facility clang shut like the watertight gates on Titanic? That the tipping point is exactly 1,000 animals, and senior dog Rocky was the first 1,000th animal to roll off the line?
To the extent that any of that is true, none of it really means anything. But somehow DOH and ACC got the idea that flooding the zone with nonsense can be an effective propaganda tool. This is especially so when your primary audience is access-impaired journalists, who by their nature aren’t inclined to question perceived authority and who are prone to distraction by shiny hooks, like “Meet Rocky, the lovable mutt who broke NYC animal control!”
These reporters aren’t likely to fact check what they hear from the officials they’re reporting on. They probably won’t dig into data on ACC intakes or “euthanasia.” They’re almost certainly unaware that just last fall DOH and ACC insisted ACC has the resources it needs to operate a fully functional open admission animal shelter system serving the largest city in the richest country in recorded history.
Here’s the Paper of Record, failing to recognize that animals packed into cages amid the overwhelming stench of waste are animals who are being abused, right before their eyes:
“It’s nonstop and no one can keep up,” [ACC spokesperson Katy] Hansen said in an interview on Sunday at the Queens facility, where animals were doubled up in some kennels and crates and the air was thick with the smell of urine and excrement. The sheer number of animals surrendered to the organization had left its employees unsure of what to do.
“ We can’t adopt our way out,” she said, as the earsplitting sound of barking seemed to echo off the walls. “I mean, unless we did a thousand adoptions this weekend, but that’s pretty unrealistic. So what is it that we can do? I don’t know. I think everyone’s trying to figure it out.”
“So what is it that we can do? I don’t know.” Just what you want to hear from a higher-up at a billion-dollar public agency. It also might be the most honest statement emitted from ACC since its unholy inception.
The Scoop New York queried ACC, DOH, City Council member and health committee chair Lynn Schulman, and the Mayor’s Office of Animal Welfare concerning ACC’s limited operations and intake shutdowns in general. There was no reply.
Here’s the latest New York companion animal news:
With two dozen recent cases confirmed in raccoons and “feral” cats, Nassau County has declared rabies an "imminent public health threat.”
New York needs stronger animal cruelty laws, Exhibit ∞ + 1.
Related: A cruelty investigator in Rochester talked to WROC about how two bills state lawmakers failed to pass would help him do his job.
Gothamist published a thorough examination of a two-year cat custody fight in Manhattan.
Officials in Rensselaer County are trying desperately to avoid responsibility for homeless companion animals.
Related: Officials in Mayville, in Chautauqua County, leave it to residents to figure out how to address a snowballing stray cat population.
NYPD officers shot and killed a dog while making an arrest in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn.
And finally: Godspeed, Gracie.
Food recalls
The FDA announced no new pet food recalls this week.
Check here for info on earlier recalls.
Thx for your wonderful work. Never any accountability for ACC. I for one, pushing for expanded adoption hours. Just simple enough people can understand, fully in ACC control. They get no money from the city for services (food / vet care) that can keep pets in current homes. Yes, they say, all is just fine. Why not try to interview Patrick, the Bd Chairman?