With long-term, and even temporary, housing solutions not yet sorted out for everyone displaced by Hurricane Sandy, nervous eyes keep shifting toward Arthur Kill Correctional Facility, a medium-security Staten Island prison that closed last year. The city has maintained that the jail “is not on the table,” but Councilman James Oddo tells the Post, “If there is no other viable option, it shouldn’t be taken off the table because of a quote unquote stigma.” About 5,200 people on Staten Island have applied for temporary housing through FEMA, but not all of them would accept this particular place, which would require a full infrastructure reboot to be inhabitable. “I lost everything, but I still have my pride,” said one father of two. “My brother was once in that very prison, and my mother used to visit him regularly. She used to tell me how miserable he looked and how filthy and disgusting that prison was.”
