As the migrant crisis shreds New York’s safety net, one leader, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), has been steadfastly consistent in his stance: silence.
It actually makes sense, though, that Schumer, the Senate majority leader, never has a word to say about the tens of thousands of people sleeping in homeless shelters and, now, on sidewalks.
The only way Schumer knows how to “solve” a problem is to throw money at it, and this problem can’t be fixed with money.
New York City was sheltering 56,200 migrants as of last week.
That’s more than double the number of people in shelters before the crisis, and pushes the population above 100,000 some nights.
Mayor Eric Adams has no idea how to handle this challenge.
Taking over the 1,025-room Roosevelt Hotel, until 2019 a tourist anchor, in May and making it a migrant welcome center was supposed to keep people from sleeping on Midtown streets once they had arrived at the Port Authority Bus Terminal a mile to the west.
Instead, the at-capacity Roosevelt has become a magnet for people with nowhere to go.
Starting last week, migrants were camping in the 95-degree heat, dozens of people and their belongings across sidewalks just steps from Grand Central.
New York has turned a big chunk of Midtown, struggling to recover its lost office workers, into a refugee camp.
Adams, then, badly needs an intervention.
Gov. Kathy Hochul offers no solution: Her idea, last week, was to turn a Queens parking lot into a tent city for 1,000 men.
So it’s natural to look to Schumer. He’s America’s most powerful senator and, in office for nearly a quarter-century, New York’s senior politician.
Having experienced 9/11, the financial crisis and other disasters, he should be able to help fix this one.
Instead, all Schumer has offered so far is . . . an introduction to a Biden official.
Adams thanked Schumer last week for brokering a meeting between the mayor and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
And what was the meeting’s outcome?
Mayorkas will offer Adams one bureaucrat to give advice on the crisis — and the secretary promised to visit New York City sometime.
We should be glad, though, that Schumer has proven ineffectual.
What Adams wants from Washington is money, to cover the city’s $4.3 billion — and rising — migrant costs.
And Schumer usually loves to give out money — it’s all he knows how to do.
Over the past month, he’s barnstormed New York state boasting about his largesse: $7 billion for a Hudson River rail tunnel, $50 million to create upstate manufacturing jobs, $1.3 million for workforce training.
But even if Schumer could wrangle billions for New York’s migrant crisis — money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, money from Health and Human Services — the cash would make the city’s problems worse.
Adams would spend that money on more “welcome centers,” hotels rooms and tent shelters.
All this spending does is encourage more irregular migrants to come to New York, the only city that offers shelter on demand.
Already, the city is spending an average $256 each day to house migrants, mostly in hotels, according to Bloomberg.
This price exceeds what many mid-priced tourist rooms, from The Row on Eighth Avenue to the Holiday Inn downtown, used to charge guests.
The city is thus using its financial might to reduce the supply of rooms for tourists — tourists who would contribute to the city’s economy.
And it’s not just the city: As Gotham transfers migrants elsewhere in the state, the city’s spending is distorting the budget-hotel market statewide and displacing long-term low-income residents and visitors.
Federal money to subsidize this policy only expands it.
As New York’s hotel-room supply dwindles, the city could conceivably use federal dollars to rent rooms at above-market prices around the broader region and even the country.
The bizarre outcome would be that New York City, by virtue of its unique shelter-on-demand policy, creates a national policy to shelter all migrants, run by City Hall but paid for by national taxpayers.
What New York could use from Schumer is to prod both Congress and the White House into an immigration policy: How many newcomers can the country realistically handle each year?
What kind of services, including housing, should the country offer people seeking asylum, particularly when many new arrivals are economic migrants who won’t qualify as refugees?
Absent such a miracle of functional governance, Schumer’s current policy — doing nothing — is better than the alternative.
Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.
