New York officials are struggling now to house busloads of migrants, sent from Texas after the city failed to open a shelter in Manhattan.
In a report released by New York Post on Sunday, the migrants that were transported from Texas to the Big Apple were being displaced after the hotel intake center plan that they were hoping for fell apart.
The report also revealed that the Department of Homeless Services told The Post “that it has abandoned its initial plan to operate an intake and processing center dedicated to the recent arrivals alongside a 600-room shelter at the ROW NYC hotel on Eighth Avenue in Midtown.”
On Sunday, the officials will only disclose that they have finally selected a finalist that will work on the said facility. However, they couldn’t reveal the contractor’s name or its location.
“DHS also admitted that it has yet to select and rent any of the 5,000 hotel rooms the agency said it is seeking to house migrants across the city. Instead, officials are continuing to commingle migrants with New Yorkers in the city’s existing shelter system — which now includes 15 “emergency” hotel facilities to also help handle a summer population surge,” the DHS said as per New York Post report.
Moreover, The Post’s analysis also revealed that NYC could spend more than $300 million every year only to provide shelter space in hotels for newly arrived migrants.
Assuming that DHS has secured an average of $147.67 per day in rent, giving out 5,800 hotel rooms to migrants could add an unexpected $312.6 million in new spending to the city budget.
“Providing these services will clearly be a significant cost that will require city officials to either shift funding from other programs or identify savings,” Ana Champeny, the top researcher at the Citizens Budget Commission, said in a statement.
Josh Goldfein, a lawyer with the homeless rights advocacy division at Legal Aid also released a statement, saying “We were already facing a crisis of homelessness in New York City when the flow of these migrant families started in earnest.”
“We’ve always had asylum seekers in the New York City shelter system, so that is not new. But obviously, the volume increased.” Goldfein added.
