Recent migrant arrivals now account for more than half of the record 100,000 people receiving care and shelter through the Big Apple’s scandal-scarred social safety net, as municipal agencies struggle to keep pace with demand, City Hall said Thursday.
The staggering new figures announced this week come as Mayor Eric Adams and city lawmakers struck a $107 billion budget deal that was balanced — in part — by pushing ahead with controversial budget cuts at the Department of Homeless Services, which has been tasked with handling much of the response.
“With more than 50,000 migrants still currently in our care, at this point, we have reached the tipping point and we are now caring for more asylum seekers than long-time New Yorkers experiencing homelessness,” said City Hall Press Secretary Fabien Levy.
“New York City continues to do more than any other city or level of government to address this national crisis, and we will continue to do our part,” he added, “but, as we’ve been saying since last year, we are in serious need of support from other cities, the state, and the federal government.”
The statistics are staggering. More than 100,000 people are either housed in New York’s shelter system — which has dramatically expanded in size with 166 emergency facilities opened, mostly in hotels, around the city — or in the public hospital system’s 11 mega-sites at a cost of $8 million a day.
While much of the public attention on the homelessness crisis typically falls on roughly 3,000 New Yorkers who live on the streets, they account for just a tiny fraction of the city’s homeless population.
Families with children account for more than half of the people in the shelters, a pattern that has repeated with recent arrivals from the southern border, officials say.
All told, City Hall estimates that housing and caring for the recent arrivals — predominantly from the southern border — will cost almost $4.4 billion when the receipts are tallied for 2023 through 2024.State officials recently committed $1 billion to help offset the cost, while the feds have promised just a fraction of that, $150 million.
Hizzoner blamed that yawning hole for consuming $1.4 billion in 2024 that City Hall would have otherwise contributed to social services and other programs as part of its overall $107 budget.
“[President] Biden should be on the hook for this $1.4 billion,” said the Council’s Minority Leader, Joe Borelli (R-Staten Island). “That money could have been used for everything from another property tax rebate to paving the streets with gold.”
Adams’ 2024 budget has ordered non-profits that the Department of Homeless Services relies on to operate many of its shelters and staff many of its outreach teams and treatment programs to come up with budget cuts of nearly 2.5% to their already approved budgets.
The memorandum ordering the cuts included suggested cutbacks, including slashing hours and increasing caseloads, which providers warn will make it even harder for them to cope with New York’s ongoing housing crisis on top of the migrant arrivals.
“It’s a disgrace,” said Catherine Trapani, who heads Homeless Services United, which represents many of the largest providers. “It’s a disgrace that when homelessness is at a record high, the mayor’s reaction is to cut the budgets of the organizations that are working to solve this issue.”
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