NYC Migrant Fight Turns Against NYC With Claims That Beds For 15,000 Available In The City
New York City Mayor Eric Adams is being criticized by a New York City Councilman for not utilizing the city’s public and supportive housing units as the migrant crisis continues to unfold.
A recent report indicates 3,932 units in the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) were empty across at the end of last month and more than 2,600 units vacant in the city’s supportive housing network meant for homeless New Yorkers. Combined those units could house 15,000 people according to Brooklyn Councilman Lincoln Restler.
“Rather than fill the thousands of units that sit empty, New York City Mayor Eric Adams is attempting to break New York State Social Services Law to shift his jurisdiction’s Sanctuary City duty to the smallest County in the State of New York, despite our very well-documented housing crisis so extreme that Rockland has been unprecedently deputized by the State of New York to take over Building and Fire Code enforcement in the Village of Spring Valley,” said County Executive Ed Day. “Sending busloads of people to this County that does not have housing will likely result in a one-way bus ticket to homelessness. It is my duty to protect the general welfare of anyone in the County or coming to the County both long term and short term.”
The article goes on to say it now takes NYCHA an average of 258 days to fill a vacant public housing apartment – nearly double the 131 days it used to take at the outset of the Adams’ administration in January 2022. This has resulted in an outstanding 700% increase in vacant NYCHA apartments from 486 at the beginning of Adams’ term to the current 3,932.
“By any account, this is nothing more than poor management not a crisis,” said County Executive Day.
In addition, New York City’s current population being down roughly half a million since April 2020 and over 20,000 hotel rooms are unoccupied, and why the County of Rockland dispute’s the City’s notions that they do not have room to help these individuals.
“These are the inhumane consequences being caused by the City of New York’s failure to plan for a crisis they knew was coming, which is drawing continued criticism from Adams’ own New York City Council,” said County Executive Day. “I on the other hand dug this County out of $138-million deficit and double-digit tax creases in nearly one term by taking responsibility for the municipality I swore to serve. He needs to learn a thing or two about what it takes to be a leader.”
