NYC hotels housing migrants get taxpayer-funded windfall: report
New York City hotels housing migrants have brought in over a billion dollars in taxpayer funds since converting their buildings into migrant shelters.
New York City is spending an average of $156 per room per night on hotel rooms that house migrants, with some rooms costing the city over $300 per night, according to a report from the New York Post.
The city has spent about $4.88 billion on the migrant crisis over the last few years, the report notes, $1.98 billion of which has gone toward housing. While some of the nearly $2 billion that has been spent on housing has gone to city shelters, roughly 80% of the shelters being used by the city are motels or inns, internal documents obtained by the New York Post revealed.
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According to the report, the city has reached contracts in the millions with multiple New York City hotels, including a $5.13 million-a-month deal with the Row NYC hotel in Midtown Manhattan. Meanwhile, the Crowne Plaza JFK in South Jamaica, Queens, has landed a $2 million per month deal for use of its 335 rooms.
The trend hasn’t gone unnoticed by business owners in the area of the hotels, who have complained that the buildings that were once filled with customers who flooded the local area with business have now been filled with migrants.
"Our taxes are being used to pay for the migrants, and where are we supposed to make revenue?" William Shandler, a manager at Iron Bar located across from the Row hotel, told the New York Post. "How as a business could we function?"
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Nevertheless, the city has continued to ink contracts with properties to host the influx of migrants. In September, the city extended its contract with the Hotel Association of New York City (HANYC) for three years and $1.3 billion. In January, New York City signed a $76.69 million deal with HANYC to provide a shelter of "last resort" to migrants at 15 hotels in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx through July.
Those deals have been crushing taxpayers, a local watchdog said.
"The migrant crisis is a gash on state and local finances, and housing is where taxpayers are bleeding most," Ken Girardin, research director at the watchdog Empire Center for Public Policy, told the New York Post.
The trend has also been called out by Republican Councilwoman Joann Ariola, who argued that the hotels were built for tourism and "not for sheltering the masses of people pouring over our borders every day."
"These locations were meant to boost the economy of this city, but instead they’ve become a net drain and are costing us enormously," Ariola said.
The mayor’s office did not immediately respond to a Fox News Digital request for comment.