Embattled New York Mayor Eric Adams has been told to rein in as the bill to house the city’s immigrants rises to $2.3 billion.
City Hall warns that 14,000 hotel rooms will be needed until at least the end of next year, when the total cost of caring for the new arrivals will reach a staggering $5.76 billion.
More than 200,000 migrants have arrived in the city since early 2022, many of them bused north by Republican governors determined to make Democratic cities share the burden of the crisis at the southern border.
And more than 150 hotels are still being used to accommodate the influx at an average cost of $352 per room each night.
“Taxpayers can’t pay for this indefinitely,” said Nicole Gelinas of the Manhattan Institute think tank. New York Post. “We should stop using hotels as shelters before the end of the year.”
More than 200,000 undocumented immigrants have arrived in the city since the beginning of 2022, and the cost of supporting them will reach $5.76 billion by the end of next year.
Some of the city’s most iconic hotels have been commandeered to accommodate the influx, including the four-star Row NYC Hotel in Times Square and the Roosevelt near Grand Central (pictured).
The figures emerged as the City began searching for a contractor to ensure it secured the thousands of rooms needed in the future.
“The New York City Department of Homeless Services seeks to continue the City Sanctuary Facility program by contracting with a vendor who can assist in acquiring commercial hotel use and large-scale hotel management services to help address the current emergency,” the agency announced.
It came after City Comptroller Brad Lander revealed that a contractor, DocGo Inc, had billed the city $1.7 million for 9,874 empty hotel rooms it claimed housed immigrants during May and June of last year.
The New York City Hotel Association is currently paid $100,000 a month to manage three immigrant housing contracts and said it would apply for a new one.
“We have five full-time employees specifically to fulfill contractual obligations, in addition to the work performed by HANYC’s regular staff for the contract, in addition to their normal duties,” said CEO Vijay Dandapani.
‘Let’s complete the application.’
Some of the city’s most emblematic hotels have been handed over to immigrants since the beginning of the crisis, 22 of them in Midtown Manhattan.
The four-star Row NYC Hotel in Times Square and the Roosevelt near Grand Central are among those that have been commandeered as pressure on space pushed the average nightly price paid by tourists above $300. for the first time.
And hotel bosses have warned they will struggle to return rooms currently housing migrants in conditions suitable for the millions of tourists keeping the economy afloat.
“They’re going to need renovations,” Dandapani said earlier this year.
“It’s great news for construction staff, but it’s not so good news if you’re currently a hotel owner.”
Tent cities sprang up at Floyd Bennett Field, Creedmoor Psychiatric Center and on the grounds of Kennedy Airport at the peak of the crisis with 214 emergency shelter sites in the city.
The city announced Wednesday that it had begun dismantling its largest shelter, the 3,000-bed facility on Randall’s Island, and that the site would be closed in March.
The shelter was known for violence and a migrant was stabbed to death there in January.
Twenty-two of the hotels were in midtown Manhattan with a total of 214 emergency shelter sites spread across the city at the peak of the crisis.
Last year, the Democratic mayor abandoned the city’s decades-old right to housing law and reduced shelter stay limits to 30 days for individuals and 60 days for those with children, in an attempt to reduce pressure on city finances.
But known crossings of undocumented immigrants at the southern border have fallen from a high of 250,000 in December to 58,000 in August, and cCity authorities said the number of refugees has decreased for 14 consecutive weeks.
On Wednesday he said he had begun dismantling the notorious Randall’s Island shelter, once the city’s largest with 3,000 beds and where a migrant was stabbed to death in a fight in January.
“The ability to close the Randall’s Island humanitarian aid center marks the latest milestone we have reached as an administration in addressing this humanitarian crisis,” said the mayor’s chief asylum seeker, Molly Schaeffer.
The mayor said the shelter will close at the end of February and the site will return to its former incarnation as a public park.
“We are not fighting every day to open new shelters, we are talking about closing them,” he added. “We’re not talking about how much we’re spending, we’re talking about how much we’ve saved.”