NYC pursuing thousands of hotel rooms to house migrants amid multibillion-dollar costs: report
New York City reportedly wants 14,000 hotel rooms to house migrants through next year as the sanctuary city continues to spend billions on the fallout from the border crisis.
The New York Post reported the city’s use of hotels to house migrants will continue despite a significant drop in migrant encounters at the southern border, and the Department of Homeless Services is seeking a contract with hotels to provide a total of 14,000 rooms to shelter migrants.
The Post reported that spending on housing over a three-year period will surpass $2.3 billion, with most of that spent on rent for hotels. Spending on the migrant crisis is expected exceed $5 billion, and Mayor Eric Adams has previously said costs could balloon to over $10 billion by the end of next fiscal year. Previous estimates had put that number even higher.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams arrives at federal court after being charged with bribery and illegally soliciting a campaign contribution from a foreign national in New York City Oct. 2, 2024. (Reuters/Caitlin Ochs)
At an average of $352 per night for at least 36,939 households, the city has previously projected it will spend $4.75 billion providing shelter, food, health care and education to the influx of migrants during the 2025 fiscal year, according to the current forecast by the city’s online asylum seeker funding tracker.
In August, the city announced two new contracts totaling $40 million for contractors to service migrants at hotels used as emergency shelters.
As numbers surged at the border in 2021 and 2022, tens of thousands of migrants traveled to major blue cities like New York City, Chicago and Philadelphia. They were aided in 2022 when Texas Gov. Greg Abbott began bussing migrants straight to those cities as a way to relieve the pressure on the border state. He chose sanctuary cities — cities that limit cooperation with federal immigration enforcement — because he said they encouraged the crisis.
There were scenes of hundreds of migrants camped outside the Roosevelt Hotel during the height of the crisis. New York City officials now say over 218,000 migrants have received services in NYC since 2022.
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Officials say they have helped complete more than 72,000 applications for work permits, temporary protected status and asylum. The city has also bought 47,000 tickets to help migrants go to other parts of the country.
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At the peak of the crisis, the city was taking in an average of 4,000 migrants per week. But that dropped into the hundreds in recent months as the crisis at the border abated after a presidential proclamation from President Biden that limited asylum claims. The Post reported more than 700 new migrants arrived in the city last week.
Migrants reach for food being handed out while being filmed by a woman outside the Roosevelt Hotel, where dozens of recently arrived migrants have been camping out as they try to secure temporary housing Aug. 2, 2023 in New York City. (Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images)
This week, the city announced it would be closing a massive tent shelter on Randall’s Island. Officials said the number of asylum seekers in city shelters has dropped for 14 straight weeks and now is at the lowest point in over a year.
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“We’re not out of the woods yet, but make no mistake, thanks in large part to our smart management strategies and successful advocacy, we have turned the corner on this crisis,” Adams said in a statement. “We’re not scrambling every day to open new shelters. We’re talking about closing them. We’re not talking about how much we’re spending. We’re talking about how much we’ve saved.
Fox News’ Danielle Wallace contributed to this report.