By: Jason Hopkins, Daily Caller News Foundation
New York City officials are reportedly looking to keep thousands of hotel rooms available for illegal migrants as the crisis in the Big Apple rages on, according to the New York Post.
The city’s Department of Homeless Services is seeking a contract with local hotels to provide roughly 14,000 rooms in order to shelter migrants through 2025, according to a report from the New York Post. The city anticipates spending on migrants in need of housing for the current fiscal year and the past two years combined will surpass $2.3 billion, with a significant amount of these costs going toward hotel rent.
“The taxpayers can’t pay for this indefinitely,” Nicole Gelinas, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute think tank, said to the Post. “We should stop using hotels as shelters by the end of the year.”
Spending on migrant services for the next three years will reach a total of $5.76 billion, with around 150 hotels currently sheltering migrants, according to the Post. The average cost to house illegal migrants per room is $352 per night.
A spokesperson for New York City’s Department of Homeless Services did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Well over 200,000 migrants have overwhelmed New York City since the spring of 2022, according to city officials. The influx of illegal migrants forced Mayor Eric Adams to declare 5% budget cuts in September 2023 for government programs and services in order to pay for their housing and other services, and in August of that year he said the city was reaching a “breaking point” from the sheer volume of migrants.
Spending on migrant housing forced city leaders to cut back on how long people could remain in the shelter system. Adams had said that the city’s right-to-shelter laws were never intended for large-scale migrant populations.
Migrants living in city shelters were ordered to leave after 30 days with no ability to reapply, although some exceptions for medical conditions or “extenuating circumstances” were made, per a decree from the mayor in March. Migrants under the age of 23 were given 60 days to remain in the shelter system, and other exceptions were made for migrant families.
“This issue will destroy New York City,” Adams said during a September 2023 town hall. “Every community in this city is going to be impacted. We have a $12 billion deficit that we’re going to have to cut – every service in this city is going to be impacted.”
When addressing the public last month after being indicted on alleged bribery charges, Adams claimed he had been targeted by the Justice Department ever since he began speaking out about the city’s immigration crisis.
New York City has several sanctuary laws in place that restrict how federal immigration authorities can cooperate with local law enforcement. While some moderate lawmakers have attempted to roll back these laws in the wake of numerous high-profile incidents involving illegal migrants, those efforts have so far fallen flat with the City Council.
Related Story: Entire NYC High School Goes Temporarily Virtual to Make Room for Roughly 2,000 Illegal Migrants
