Mayor: “New York can’t handle the influx of migrants.”
According to Eric Adams, the government has only provided a “depressingly small” amount of money to the city thus far.
According to Mayor Eric Adams in an interview with RTVI, New York City is thinking about turning vacant offices into affordable housing. He acknowledged that the city was having trouble managing the sudden number of migrants over the previous year.
According to Adams, “many people are still working from home after the pandemic, and these empty empty office spaces could be used to address our city’s lack of affordable housing.”
While the city waits for additional funding from the White House to address this “national scale” issue, officials intend to turn nearly “90 million square meters of empty real estate” into housing for migrants.
“Up to this point, the US Federal Emergency Management Agency has only provided a depressingly meager sum of funding to New York. We need to receive the resources we need to deal with this issue because the great majority of migrants and asylum seekers are arriving in our city, he said.
The mayor also made special reference to the surge of Ukrainian migrants into the city, alleging that more than 32,000 of the almost 250,000 refugees from the conflict between Moscow and Kiev who have entered the US since it began are attempting to live in New York City. The Brooklyn area, where there are many Ukrainian and Russian-speaking populations, is another location where immigrant Ukrainians frequently try to reside.
“Many Ukrainian migrants have already arrived in New York and are actively contributing to the local economy… We will continue to support the growth and expansion of the thriving Ukrainian community in New York. To actually assist Ukrainian refugees in assimilating into local society, our administration has provided several local institutions and groups with a sizeable amount of funding, Adams told RTVI.
In the meantime, NYC authorities also announced earlier this month that churches, mosques, and synagogues throughout the city will begin serving as migrant shelters beginning in July, with each facility planned to host about 19 adult men overnight for two years. The establishments will receive $125 per migrant per night in reimbursement from the city’s tax payers, according to Adams.
The mayor demanded that the “108 thousand cities, towns, and villages in America” be used to address the humanitarian problem and claimed that it is those who fail to provide the necessary conditions rather than the migrants who are fleeing their home countries in quest of the “American Dream” who are to blame.
