City bails out failing hotel with stemming the migrant crisis

 

 LIC Post

A four-star hotel in Long Island City will soon serve as a location to house economic migrants, sources tell the Queens/LIC Post.

The Collective Paper Factory, a hotel located at 37-06 36th St., is understood to have closed last week and work is underway to convert it into a Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Center, a shelter for economic migrants, according to sources familiar with the plan.

When operating as a hotel, the premises boasted 125 guest rooms, communal spaces, a gym, several meeting rooms, and a bar/restaurant on the ground floor.

It is unclear how many people will be housed at the 5-story facility as the city continues to struggle to cope with an unprecedented surge of migrants. Nearly 100,000 migrants have come through the city’s intake system since the spring of 2022 and the revised cost to the taxpayer is now expected to hit $12 billion by the summer of 2025.

The mayor’s office did not respond to an email request from the Queens/LIC Post seeking to confirm news about the shelter opening at The Collective Paper Factory. However, a woman at the hotel said via phone on Thursday, Aug. 10, that the hotel will soon be housing the migrants, in addition to other sources.

A spokesperson for Councilwoman Julie Won, who represents District 26 — which covers Long Island City, Sunnyside, Woodside and parts of Astoria — did not say if her office had been informed of the plans. The spokesperson said that throughout the migrant crisis, the city has not notified elected officials before commercial hotel shelter sites opened in their respective districts.

District 26 already has more than 30 shelters currently accommodating migrants, Won’s spokesperson said. For instance, in February, the Wingate by Wyndham, a three-star hotel located at 38-70 12th St., was converted into a shelter for migrants.

 

12 billion dollars more

Photo by JQ LLC

NY Daily News  

New York City is on track to spend as much as $12 billion on managing the local migrant crisis by mid-2025 — a staggering price tag that Mayor Adams warned Wednesday will necessitate more “across the board” cuts to city services.

The new City Hall cost estimate — which was first reported by the Daily News ahead of its Wednesday morning release — eclipses the $4.3 billion Adams’ administration previously projected it would spend by July 2024 on housing, feeding and providing services for the tens of thousands of migrants who have arrived since last year.

Under the administration’s revised projection, which was prompted by a recent uptick in migrant arrivals, the city is expected to spend as much as $6.1 billion by July 2024. Costs are then set to surge further, reaching the $12 billion mark by July 2025, according to the projection.

“We are past our breaking point,” Adams said in a speech at City Hall, adding that it “breaks this city’s heart” that dozens of migrants resorted a few weeks ago to sleeping on a Midtown Manhattan sidewalk after being told there was no more room in the city’s overcrowded shelter system.

On average, Adams said, the city is already spending $9.8 million per day on accommodating migrants. There are currently more than 57,000 migrants in the city’s shelters and emergency housing systems, most of them Latin Americans who arrived in New York after crossing the U.S. southern border in hopes of obtaining asylum status, according to Adams’ office.

Due to the ballooning price tag, Adams said his administration is in the process of scaling back services being offered to migrants in the city’s care. Perks like free meals, laundry and hygiene products are likely to be on the chopping block, Adams said.

“Every service must be cut,” he told reporters in the City Hall Rotunda after his speech. “Some of the things we were doing we are not going to be able to do.”

Beyond migrants, Adams said services being offered to New Yorkers are also likely to be trimmed back. “Every service in this city is going to be impacted,” he said.

Adams has already slashed spending at nearly all city agencies over the past year due to fiscal concerns largely driven by the migrant crisis. That has resulted in drastic service reductions, like the recent closure of a city Health Department library that emerged as a key scientific research resource during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The only way the city can avoid further budgetary pain is if President Biden’s administration provides Adams’ administration with more financial and logistical aid, the mayor said.

“The White House can help us now,” Adams said.

Let's go Brandon, show us the money.

 

Queens gets the migrant crisis

NY Post 

Queens is taking the largest share of migrants into emergency shelters set up by the city — fueling what the borough’s president on Thursday called a “powder keg” of crises and creating a “recipe for a social and economic disaster.”

Queens was housing 4,782 migrants, or 32% of the total 14,777 placed in emergency shelters as of Wednesday, according to data compiled by the Department of Homeless Services and obtained by The Post on Thursday.

That share is more than one-sixth greater than the 27.3% that Queens residents contribute to the city’s total population, according to 2020 census data.

“It’s a powder keg in Queens at this point,” said Queens Borough President Donovan Richards.

He said the migrants were being sent even though “there’s not enough resources being pumped into the communities.”

“There are several crises. You have a recession coming. We have a lack of affordable housing, rising rents. We have food insecurity.

“This is a recipe for a social and economic disaster,” he warned.

Richards specifically cited “not enough bilingual teachers and not enough bilingual mental health counselors — even in Queens,” which is known as “The World’s Borough” because nearly half the 2.4 million residents were born abroad.

“It’s beyond ridiculous,” he emphasized.

What happened to "Queens gets the money" and "#QueensWinning Mr. Borough President...

100,000

Patch

The coronavirus crisis has forced more than 100,000 small businesses in New York to close permanently, the governor said Friday. The huge swath of closures means main streets will look at lot different when the state is allowed to reopen.

At most risk have been businesses that are owned by minorities, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said.
"Small businesses are taking a real beating," he said. "They are 90 percent of New York's businesses and they're facing the toughest challengers.

"The economic projections, vis-a-vis small business, are actually frightening. More than 100,000 have shut permanently since the pandemic hit. Many small businesses just don't have the staying power to continue to pay all the fixed costs, the lease, etcetera, when they have no income whatsoever."

All but essential businesses have now been closed since New York's shutdown started on March 22. Millions of former employees are now registered as unemployed.

Chancellor Carranza proposes crisis advantage school admission changes and rails against Councilman Holden for being tardy for caring for his ill mother.

 

NY Post

New York City Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza said he doesn’t have “a nefarious plan” to use the coronavirus crisis to overhaul middle and high school admission policies, but so far he has given no hint of the “tweaks” he has in mind.

Carranza, who was caught on tape last month telling a national group of Latino school leaders, 
“Never waste a good crisis to transform a system,” seemed to back-pedal Thursday while addressing a virtual public meeting of the advisory Panel For Educational Policy.

“We are not planning a nefarious plan to use this pandemic to change policy,” the chancellor said. 
“We know there must be some tweaks to admissions, not permanent changes.”

Adding to the confusion, Mayor de Blasio at a press conference the day before bluntly spoke about using the pandemic to change the “status quo.”

“Many things are going to be reevaluated as a result of this crisis,” he said. “We are not just going to bring New York City back with the status quo that was there before. But we’re going to try to make a series of changes that favor equity and fairness.”

Both Carranza and de Blasio have voiced their disdain for selective “screened schools,” even though their own children attended them.

A DOE spokeswoman had nothing to add on the issue Friday, but parents are buzzing about the possibilities. Among those under discussion:

• A lottery system: This would eliminate all “screens” and accept students randomly, perhaps with priority fo the disadvantaged. This plan would mirror the controversial system in Brooklyn’s District 15, where the middle schools no longer select students based on report-card grades, test scores, or even auditions for performing arts programs. The District 15 lottery sets aside seats for kids from low-income families, those learning English as a new language, and the homeless.
• Use prior test scores: Schools could use scores from the 3rd- and 6th-grade state exams. Schools with a ranking system could simply plug in metrics from the previous year. But it’s not the fairest way to go, parents say, because kids were told that the 4th- and 7th-grade scores counted for admissions and tried harder then.

NY Post

 Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza angrily scolded a City Council member for being late to a virtual public hearing, ignoring the elected official’s explanation that he was tending to his ailing 96-year-old mother.

Carranza’s outburst, which came during a meeting of the advisory Panel for Educational Policy on Thursday, recalled the time he walked out of a Queens district meeting when parents complained their children were physically and sexually assaulted. He later accused the parents of “grandstanding.”

This time, Carranza blew up at Queens lawmaker Robert Holden, who was not logged in to the video meeting when called upon about 7:30 p.m.

“I had a number of issues to handle tonight including my mother in a nursing home fighting for her life and may have COVID,” Holden explained when he was finally called upon two hours later.

 Holden then criticized the chancellor’s recent comment to school leaders — “Never waste a good crisis,” as reported in The Post.

 That comment “was an insult to everyone fighting COVID,” Holden said. “That comment was disgraceful, and he should apologize for it.”

Mortality rates of homeless people went up

 

NY Post

More homeless New Yorkers died last year than in any other in the past decade — despite promises by Mayor Bill de Blasio to make their lives better.

Homeless deaths from July 2018 through June 2019 totaled 404 — a staggering 39% increase from the previous fiscal year and the highest number since 2006, when the city began recording the deaths.
Sixty percent died in a hospital. The rest died outdoors or in other places that the city didn’t specify in its annual report, which is mandated by law.

The top five causes of the deaths: drugs, heart disease, alcoholism, unspecified accidents and cancer.
Ten people were killed; 15 killed themselves.

Far more men died than women — 313 to 91.

Even with the deaths, the homeless population spiked in fiscal 2019 — reaching an all-time high in shelters of 63,839 in last January, according to the Coalition for the Homeless.

The number of homeless has climbed nearly every year since the de Blasio took office, and spending on city homeless services has more than doubled.

This, despite the mayor’s repeated promises to “turn the tide” on homelessness.

“An ever-growing homeless population is unacceptable to the future of New York City . . . it will not happen under our watch,” de Blasio said days before his swearing-in on Jan. 1, 2014.
In response to the skyrocketing number of deaths, a coalition spokeswoman called on the state and the city to provide more affordable housing.

“No person should have to live — or die — without stable housing,” Jacquelyn Simone said. “This report should serve as a tragic reminder why Mayor de Blasio and Governor Cuomo must both step up with housing solutions at a scale to meet the need.”

de Blasio and Banks exporting homeless crisis to other states

NY Post

 
New York City generously shares its homeless crisis with every corner of America.

From the tropical shores of Honolulu and Puerto Rico, to the badlands of Utah and backwaters of Louisiana, the Big Apple has sent local homeless families to 373 cities across the country with a full year of rent in their pockets as part of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s “Special One-Time Assistance Program.”  Usually, the receiving city knows nothing about it.

City taxpayers have spent $89 million on rent alone since the program’s August 2017 inception to export 5,074 homeless families — 12,482 individuals — to places as close as Newark and as far as the South Pacific, according to Department of Homeless Services data obtained by The Post. Families, who once lived in city shelters, decamped to 32 states and Puerto Rico.

The city also paid travel expenses, through a separate taxpayer-funded program called Project Reconnect, but would not divulge how much it spent. A Friday flight to Honolulu for four people would cost about $1,400. A bus ticket to Salt Lake City, Utah, for the same family would cost $800.

Add to the tab the cost of furnishings, which the city also did not disclose. One SOTA recipient said she received $1,000 for them.

DHS defends the stratospheric costs, saying it actually saves the city on shelter funding — which amounts to about $41,000 annually per family, as compared to the average yearly rent of $17,563 to house families elsewhere.

But critics says the “stop-gap solution” has been wrought with problems, and ultimately has failed to help curb the city’s homelessness.

Not only are officials in towns where the city’s homeless land up in arms, but hundreds of the homeless families are returning to the five boroughs — and some are even suing NYC over being abandoned in barely livable conditions. Multiple outside agencies and organizations have opened investigations into SOTA.

“We were initially seeing a lot of complaints about conditions. Now that the program has been in operation long enough that the SOTA subsidy is expiring, one of our main concerns is it might not be realistic for people to be entirely self-sufficient after that first year,” said Jacquelyn Simone, policy analyst at Coalition for the Homeless.

DHS said 224 SOTA families have ended up back in New York City shelters. The agency did not answer The Post’s repeated requests for the number of families who wind up in out-of-town shelters.

“We suggested that DHS reach out to people as their subsidy runs out to confirm they will be secure and not have to re-enter shelter, but the agency told us they have no plans to do that,” said Legal Aid lawyer Joshua Goldfein, whose firm represents SOTA families who say the city pressured them to move into New Jersey slums, then ignored calls for help.

Homeless men get evicted from house they built by the Grand Central Parkway

NY1


A wooded area off the Grand Central Parkway was once known as the "Parkside Hill Community Garden." But's it's been a long time since residents planted anything there.

"Honestly, this has been a dumping ground for quite some time," Swarovski Beaumont said at the location.

Tires, shopping carts, and trash are common now. Sometime last year, neighbors said, two men planted themselves here, pitching tents behind the thicket:


"They're building a tiny home on city property," the resident said.

A @NY1 exclusive: Two men began constructing their own well-crafted shelter in the thicket off the GCP this week. Concerned neighbors say the area used to be a community garden but became a homeless encampment and dumping ground over the years pic.twitter.com/j913aHlriK

— Van Tieu (@Van_Tieu) October 18, 2019

 "They definitely have a power saw and a power drill," she said. "They have already built flooring, and started to build insulation."

When we returned two days later, after asking the city parks department about the encampment, the city had stepped in.

Several city agencies, including the Department of Homeless Services and the Department of Sanitation, came together to clean up the site Friday morning.

The city's response included dozens of workers in protective clothing. An official, who declined to be identified, said one of the men was taken to a shelter, but that the other refused services an outreach team offered.

Advocates for the homeless say the encampment is a sign of just how bad the homeless crisis has become.

"This story is pretty incredible, that people are opting to build their own housing in a city where we are one of the richest places on earth," said Paulette Soltani, of VOCAL-NY.

The mayor's officer told NY1, "The Mayor has been clear — we will not tolerate encampments.  Our outreach teams have met with these individuals, offered them services, and are working to connect them with further resources."