NYC spending $69M on private firms to staff migrant shelters
The Big Apple is now awarding tens of millions of dollars to private firms to staff its growing number of emergency migrant shelters — as the asylum seekers crisis plaguing the city continues to escalate, new contracts revealed Tuesday.
The city is set to pay $69 million to the Essey Group LLC to provide temporary staffing at its “sanctuary sites,” according to the Department of Homeless and Department of Social Services.
Meanwhile, Health+Hospitals officials are also soliciting bids from contractors to manage its 13 Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Centers — with even more large-scale mega shelters slated to open in the future.
“Because the HERRC program evolves quickly, with new sites coming online rapidly and with program practices constantly evolving, selected vendors must be able to provide full-scale project management support,” a notice soliciting proposals stated.
“This includes supporting go-live planning and execution for new site openings, as well as supporting the design and launch of new program attributes. Successful bidders must be capable of navigating complex situations with cultural competency and compassion.”
A staggering 188 emergency migrant shelters are already being bankrolled by the city, including a number of hotels that cost a fortune to lease.
The city is also setting aside millions to pay private security firms to patrol those sites.
Elsewhere, more than $10.8 million is being coughed up to cover staffing and migrant services at two JFK Airport hotels that have been converted to asylum seeker shelters, DHS said Monday.
The agency awarded a $5.36 million contract to BHRAGS Home Corp. to aid single migrants at Hotel 95 JFK at 145-07 95th Ave. in Jamaica, while the Bronx Family Network was paid $5.4 million to house single adult migrants at the hotel-turned-shelter at 177-08 Liberty Avenue in Jamaica.
Mayor Eric Adams, who has repeatedly forecast the migrant crisis will set the city back as much as $4.5 billion, has begged the Biden administration and Congress for additional aid to cover the cost of housing the asylum seekers.
As of this week, more than 55,000 migrants were staying in the city-run shelters.
In a desperate gambit, Adam — who has warned the city is already at capacity — announced a 60-day stay limit for single adult migrants currently in the shelters.
He even drafted flyers in both Spanish and English that begs migrants to reconsider coming to the Big Apple — insisting the city can no longer guarantee shelter and trashing his own metropolis as too costly to live.
The National Guard, however, has already refused to hand them out at city sites.
It comes as Adams continues to warn the ability to aid the unrelenting stream of migrants is unstainable, with more than 90,000 asylum seekers pouring into the city since April last year.
“And so it’s not like, okay, let’s deal with this number, and then, we can say, ‘Okay, we’re finished,’” Adams said Monday.
“No. It’s just continuing. So the system must change, and our goal is to place people in the right setting, but this is not sustainable, and we have to be honest about that.”
