By Ramon Tomey /May 07, 2024 /NewsTarget
Another hotel in New York City (NYC) has been converted into a shelter for illegal immigrants.
The Hotel Le Jolie in the fashionable Williamsburg neighborhood of NYC’s Brooklyn borough has been selected as a sanctuary site for migrants by the office of NYC Mayor Eric Adams, according to the National Pulse. The city, through the NYC Department of Homeless Services (NYC DHS), awarded a $12.3 million contract for the hotel to serve as a “temporary” home for border crossers.
As part of the contract, the Brooklyn-based St. P.A.U.L.S. Inc. will manage the facility. A source familiar with the shelter operation told the New York Post: “They are having St. P.A.U.L.S. take over the operation. Nothing functionally changes.”
The same source added that the NYC DHS was deploying temporary staff at the site, and expressed hope that the nonprofit would provide better services for migrant families. The Post reached out to Hotel Le Jolie management and St. P.A.U.L.S. for comment but received no reply as of press time.
The Hotel Le Jolie is not the only establishment that was converted into a migrant shelter by Adams’ administration. Last May, the iconic Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan was reopened to accommodate migrants after its 2020 closure.
According to Adams, the hotel-turned-shelter will serve as a “centralized intake center for all arriving asylum seekers and providing migrants with access to a range of legal, medical and reconnection services, as well as placement, if needed, in a shelter or humanitarian relief center.”
The mayor added that the Roosevelt Hotel would open up 175 rooms for children and families until it is scaled to approximately 850 rooms. An additional 100 to 150 rooms will be reserved for migrants in transition to other locations. Before its closure in December 2020 and subsequent reopening as a shelter almost three years later, the hotel boasted more than 1,000 rooms for guests.
NYC government inking deals with hotels to house migrants
The Big Apple has allocated $1.3 billion to the Hotel Association of NYC (HANYC) to make blocks of rooms available to illegal aliens in Brooklyn, Queens and The Bronx. Over 100 hotels across the city are offering rooms to migrants under this scheme, many at taxpayers’ expense.
In a recent development, the Adams administration inked a new emergency $76.69 million contract with the HANYC to provide “last resort” shelter to migrant families. According to the Post, 15 hotels in the three boroughs will make blocks of rooms available to asylum-seeking families for up to 28 days under the contract’s “vouchering program.” This program, the outlet added, would run through July.
Almost 200,000 migrants are believed to have entered NYC since the spring of 2022, with the Big Apple’s public resources significantly strained as a result. A total of $2.4 billion has been carved out of the state budget to provide for them. But this involves significant waste, with thousands of free meals for migrants being discarded. (Related: NYC hotel discarding TONS OF FOOD meant for illegals.)
This influx of migrants has overwhelmed the city’s shelter population and forced the NYC DHS to rely on hotels. The city agency has also resorted to setting up massive tent cities at Floyd Bennett Field, Creedmor Psychiatric Center and John F. Kennedy International Airport. According to recent data from New York City Hall, the Big Apple is shelling out an average of more than $387 every day to put up a single migrant household in taxpayer-funded shelters.
Adams once boasted that NYC would always be a “sanctuary city” under his leadership, praising President Joe Biden for halting border wall construction. The mayor has since changed his tune, warning that the migrant crisis will “destroy” his city and wanting to change its “sanctuary” status. Adams has also attacked the Biden administration for not doing enough to assist him.
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