New York City is currently spending more money on housing and services per migrant than it did last summer, despite Mayor Eric Adams’ projections showing the overall toll of the crisis is falling thanks to reductions in the number of asylum seekers in municipal care.
Molly Wasow Park, Commissioner of Social Services (DSS) of the mayor’s office, revealed at a City Council hearing on Monday that The current average cost to care for a migrant household, known as the “daily rate,” is $388 Dollars. That price includes all categories of expenses related to care, including food and accommodation.
The figure revealed by the commissioner is $5 dollars more than the $383 that Adams cited last August, he said. Daily News. After Monday’s City Council hearing, the mayor’s spokesman, Charles Lutvak, noted that the daily rate reached a maximum of $394 on October 10, indicating that it has since fallen slightly, although it is still higher than in August.
In September, Mayor Adams declared that the massive arrival of immigrants will “destroy” the city, claiming lack of resources from Joe Biden’s government.
In November, Adams ordered his administration to find a way to reduce overall projected migrant spending by 20% in the current fiscal year 2024, using the August projection that included the $383 daily rate as a starting point for that goal. saving.
Last month the City Council said that the municipal administration had been “successful” in formulating a plan to achieve the 20% cut, setting its new total projected cost of the migrant crisis at $10.6 billion through the end of fiscal year 2025, down from the previous forecast of $12.25 billion. The reduced projection led Adams to reverse some budget cuts he had enacted months earlier to offset spending on the immigration crisis.
The mayor said last month that his government was able to reduce projected spending thanks to a initiative to reduce the census of immigrant shelters. The administration’s main mechanism for doing so has been limit consecutive stays in shelters for migrant adults to 30 days and for migrant families with children to 60 days. The policies appear to have had an impact, as There are currently about 65,000 immigrants under the city’s care, up from about 68,000 in August.
The other component that Adams said in February would help reduce migrant costs was for the city to move away from for-profit migrant shelter contractors and rely on cheaper non-profit providers. It is unclear how much progress has been made on that point.
NYC Health + Hospitalswhich has helped oversee the migrant response, filed multiple new for-profit migrant services contracts just last December, including one for DocGo, a controversial medical firm that has come under scrutiny by the attorney general. state, Letitia James.
When asked at Monday’s hearing if she anticipates the per diem rate for migrants will begin to decline, Commissioner Wasow Park suggested there is still work to be done on that front. “I absolutely believe we will see changes in asylum numbers as there is a push to reduce costs,” she testified.
The daily rate of $388 includes the costs associated with housing migrants in the network of Help and Response Centers for Humanitarian Emergencies in the cityknown as HERRC, as well as in their traditional shelters in the Department of Homeless Services (DHS).
In the traditional DHS system, the per diem rate is much lower. For a single adult it costs $145.13 per day and for families with children $232.40, Wasow Park testified, indicating that migrants’ high per diem rate is being driven by HERRC spending. However, it is unclear what the daily rate is at such a facility.
Lutvak, Adams’ spokesman, did not say whether the newly revealed high daily migrant rate could affect the mayor’s savings directives. He also did not comment on what has caused the fluctuations in the rate.
According to the latest data from Adams’ office, The city has spent just over $4 billion on housing and services for the tens of thousands of immigrants, mostly Latin Americans, who have arrived since spring 2022.
In recent weeks the mayor has said that reducing the costs of immigrants in the city is especially important, since it seems federal government unlikely to provide any relief significant additional financial in the short term.
The 53% increase in the average daily population in NYC shelters is “driven by the unprecedented increase in incoming people, mainly asylum seekers which represented more than half of all entrants during the period,” DHS said in January in its quarterly assessment included in a 432-page report.
There was an average of 83,985 people in city-run shelters per day during the third quarter of 2023 compared to 54,738 people in 2022, highlighted New York Post.
Until January 2024 New York City had opened more than 210 emergency shelter sites to house more than 170,700 migrants since the border crisis began in 2022.according to officials. More than 100 hotels They have become emergency shelters, at an estimated cost exceeding one billion dollars.
The migration crisis has marked the two years of Mayor Adams’ administration, in the midst of a national political battle between democrats and republicans. It is estimated that between April 2022 and December 2023 164,500 personas They passed through the city’s admission center.
2024-03-13 05:35:27
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