New York City’s Emergency Management Commissioner Zach Iscol told a City Council panel meeting that the Department of Homeless Services ...
New York City’s Emergency Management Commissioner Zach Iscol told a City Council panel meeting that the Department of Homeless Services and Health & Hospital are spending an average of $363 per day for a single illegal migrant’s shelter and food.
That translates to over $10 million per day as more than 30,000 illegal migrants currently are housed in the city’s taxpayer-funded facilities, according to reports.
City Hall puts the minimum daily cost of taking care of illegal immigrants at $4,622,800, telling the media that there are 12,700 households currently in its care.
Iscol warned the City Council’s Committee on Contracts that “the city is at the end of its resources, and the situation is not sustainable.”
According to Iscol, the temporary Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Centers set up by the city to deal with the influx of illegal immigrants are not viable solutions.
He added that the city has reached out for help from both state and federal governments. However, the city is not getting enough support from President Joe Biden and New York State Governor Kathy Hochul.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) only provided the city with $8 million in December. City Council Minority Leader Joe Borelli and Rep. Nicole Malliotakis expressed frustration, with Borelli stating that the Biden administration should take responsibility for the situation and provide financial aid to the city.
Hochul has promised $1 billion in aid to the city for the crisis in her state budget, though the city will have to pay a third of the amount. The Biden administration, on the other hand, has yet to commit to funding any amount of aid.
NYC taxpayers’ money going to waste – literally
Meanwhile, the New York Post reported earlier this year that nearly a ton of taxpayer-provided food gets tossed in the trash every day at a Manhattan hotel being used to house migrants.
Disturbing photos show garbage bags full of sandwiches and bagels awaiting disposal at the four-star Row NYC hotel near Times Square, where the city pays a daily rate as high as $500 per room, hotel employee Felipe Rodriguez told the Post.
“It’s a crime to be throwing out so much food,” he said.
According to Rodriguez, at least 40 percent of the food supplied to migrants at the Row gets thrown out. He estimated the amount wasted at “almost a ton” a day.
“How do I know that? Because the sanitation guys go floor by floor every day, picking up the trash,” he said.
“Before, it used to be something like six, seven bags in the back landing of each floor. Now they’re picking up 15, 20 bags. Anything [the migrants] don’t consume is in those bags, and they’re heavy. I weighed one of the bags full of sandwiches one time and it weighed 60 pounds.”
The expanding roster of hotels in New York City is being used to house about 26,100 of the 38,700 migrants who’ve flooded into the Big Apple since the spring, according to City Hall.
Officials initially planned to have migrants undergo processing in those hotels for just 72 hours, but they abandoned the plan after getting overwhelmed by the influx that led New York City Mayor Eric Adams to declare a state of emergency in October.
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