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By Michael Gartland
Mayor Adams predicted Wednesday night that the influx of more than 110,000 migrants will “destroy” New York City and continued his demands for the federal government to step up efforts to address what he called a “national crisis.”
Adams’ comments represent perhaps his starkest rhetoric yet on the situation, which began to take shape in the spring of last year when asylum seekers started flooding into the city after crossing into American border states — with some coming to New York on buses sent by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
“I don’t see an ending to this. This issue will destroy New York City. Destroy New York City. We’re getting 10,000 migrants a month,” he said at a town hall-style meeting on the Upper West Side. “All of us are going to be impacted by this. I said it last year when we had 15,000, and I’m telling you now with 110,000 — the city we knew, we’re about to lose.”
Adams’ remarks came just hours after his administration announced the city would remove hundreds of single adult migrants from hotels and move them to a mega shelter on Randalls Island to make room families with children amid a shortage of shelter space.
For more than a year, he and his administration have struggled to process the flow of asylum seekers to the city and in response have adopted measures such as opening additional shelters, using hotel rooms as provisional shelters and trying to roll back the right-to-shelter law, which requires the city provide housing to anyone who seeks it within a proscribed time frame.
Advocates to the left of the mayor have largely supported his calls on the feds and state government to do more, but have also chided him for what they view as his sometimes inflammatory rhetoric surrounding the issue.
In a joint statement from the Legal Aid Society and Coalition for the Homeless — which is currently in a legal entanglement with the city over its right-to-shelter provision — called Adams’ comments “dangerous rhetoric” that one would “expect from fringe politicians on the far-right of the political spectrum, not from the mayor of a city that has always welcomed and celebrated its diverse and critically important immigrant community.”
Jews for Racial & Economic Justice criticized Adams, a more moderate Democrat, for his recent remarks on Thursday and suggested that instead of pursuing austerity measures, he should invest more wisely in the city’s social safety net.
“What threatens to destroy New York City are billionaires trying to turn our city into a playground for the wealthy few, and the politicians who dine with them and choose to defund social services while criminalizing poverty and spreading fear & division,” the group said in a statement posted on social media.
Advocates have also criticized what they view as his failure to effectively utilize the tools already at his disposal.
In a letter to the mayor’s office obtained Thursday by the Daily News, more than three dozen advocacy groups slammed Adams for how he’s handled the crisis — and demanded he change course.
In a laundry list of policy prescriptions, the groups called on the administration to use thousands of vacant apartments under the city’s control to house the migrants, expand its use of housing vouchers and end a relatively new city policy that allows single adult migrants to remain in city shelters for only 60 days before they have to find “alternate housing.”
The groups — which include the New York Working Families Party, Urban Justice Center, VOCAL-NY and the Bronx Defenders — decried the 60-day rule as denying migrants access to the right to shelter.
“The city’s framing of the arrival of immigrants as a crisis deflects from the real issue — the city has not gotten a handle on its long-term housing and homelessness crises. This is not because of recent arrivals to New York — our city has always been a city of immigrants,” the groups said. “It is because of a lack of progress on issues critical to all New Yorkers — homelessness, housing affordability, and housing preservation. Framing this as a ‘migrant problem’ invites racism and xenophobia.”