New York City Mayor Eric Adams is continuing to struggle with ways to shelter all the illegal migrants flooding the Big Apple. Since last year, the city has been housing the undocumented in luxury hotels, intake centers, and any other buildings that can be co-opted for the purpose. But the problem continues to grow as hundreds more arrive each day. So what is the NY Democrats’ newest solution? Adams wants to spend billions of dollars to shelter aliens in churches and residents’ spare bedrooms. However, because it is so expensive to pay for the migrants, the mayor plans to trim other services, which include meals for senior citizens and day care for three-year olds.
Migrants Benefit While Americans See Cutbacks
Last week, Mayor Adams announced a two-year partnership with the New York Disaster Interfaith Services to acquire 50 houses of worship across five boroughs. It is estimated the plan will shelter 1,000 migrants, mostly adult males, and the price tag for that is estimated to be up to $54,000 per day. “It is my vision to take the step to this faith-based locales and then move to a private residence,” the mayor said during a press conference. “There are residents right now who are suffering because of economic challenges. They have spare rooms.”
The mayor’s idea to have residents rent rooms to immigrants has its own legal challenges, however. For example, there is a rule that prevents property owners or tenants “from renting out their entire apartment or home to a guest for less than 30 days,” Newsweek explained. “Another rule blocks landlords from preventing their tenants from having guests as long as the guests stay less than 30 days.”
While the good Samaritan approach is not necessarily a bad thing, critics argue that citizens are already paying too much just to live in the city. The cost is so exorbitant that cuts need to be made, and that trimming hurts some of the most vulnerable New Yorkers. Cuts include meals for senior citizens, full-day care for three-year-olds, and re-entry programs for Rikers Island prisoners, Bloomberg reported.
Will the city be liable if any of these migrants housed with local residents commit a crime? How well are the immigrants being vetted? These are but a few of the concerns worrying the people of the Big Apple.
(Photo by Lokman Vural Elibol/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Meanwhile, the city continues to rent hotel rooms and even entire hotels, many times paying more than the business had been charging regular customers. On the positive side, some of these hotels were going out of business and filing for bankruptcy after the pandemic had them shuttering their doors. On the negative end of the spectrum, New Yorkers are paying much more per night for a migrant to stay in one of their own hotels than they would have paid for themselves.
The 50-story Holiday Inn in Manhattan, for example, went bankrupt in November last year, but the city came to the rescue with a proposal to pay $190 for each room normally priced $110. If approved, the city would guarantee full occupancy as well, which is estimated to provide the Inn with $10.5 million in profit. According to Bloomberg:
“An analysis of records shows that in many cases, the city is paying premium daily rates to house the migrants – forking over $311 a night at the two-star Holiday Inn Express on Kings Highway in Brooklyn and $200 a night at the once-posh Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan that shuttered during the pandemic.”
But the city has to find some place to house all these migrants, right? “It is a feature of emergency procurement that you pay through the nose,” City Comptroller Brad Lander told Bloomberg about the arrangement with the hotels. “If you could reduce the cost of hotel rooms, even modestly you would save a lot of money.”
As Liberty Nation recently reported, the Crossroads Hotel in Newburgh, about 60 miles north of the city, booted out nearly two dozen vets to make room for housing. Hotels are charging more than their regular rates, at the taxpayer’s expense, and city services for the vulnerable are being cut to help pay for it – all of this for people who disregard America’s laws and cross into the country illegally. Democrat-run states are starting to feel the burn and frustration of their demand for open-borders.
