Hotels are set to easily rake in well over a billion dollars in taxpayer funds for turning their buildings into migrant shelters.
Of the 193 migrant shelters being used by the city to house 65,300 individuals, 153 — or nearly 80% — are hotels, motels or inns, according to an internal document obtained by The Post.
New York City is spending, on average, $160 per hotel room to house migrants, officials said, although some operators reportedly have banked more than $300 a night per room since migrants first began being bussed up from the southern border in spring 2022. The taxpayer tab for daily migrant shelter costs overall is $352 per household, according to the city.
Through May 31, of the estimated $4.88 billion spent on the migrant crisis, $1.98 billion went toward housing, which includes the costs for hotels but also other shelters such as the sprawling tent cities at Floyd Bennett Field and Randall’s Island, according to the Office of Management and Budget.
Among the more staggering migrant shelter contracts is a $5.13 million-a-month deal between the 1,331-room Row NYC hotel in Midtown Manhattan and the city’s Health + Hospitals agency, according to its June board of directors report. The Crowne Plaza JFK in South Jamaica, Queens, meanwhile, landed a $2 million a month deal for use of its 335 rooms, the report noted.
William Shandler, a manager at Iron Bar located across from the Row hotel, said he and other businesses in the neighborhood were getting “hit at both ends” by the city’s decision to house migrants in luxury hotels, which previously had been filled with customers.
“Our taxes are being used to pay for the migrants, and where are we supposed to make revenue?” said Shandler. How as a business could we function?” --->READ MORE HERE
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| Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images |
The Holiday Inn in Manhattan’s Financial District has had a tough few years, shutting twice during the pandemic and struggling with too much debt. In November, owner Jubao Xie put the 50-story hotel, the world's tallest Holiday Inn, into bankruptcy.
Just weeks later, New York City Mayor Eric Adams’s administration came with a lifeline: It wanted to rent all 492 rooms to house roughly 15,000 migrants over the next 15 months.
The hotel, typically charging $110 a night, would get 73% more, or $190 a room. Plus, the city would guarantee full occupancy at a time when it expected to be just 70% full.
Not only would the Holiday Inn be a “good corporate citizen” by agreeing to the contract, it was expected to rake in a “significant” $10.5 million profit, according to a bankruptcy filing.
The judge on the case urged the hotel operator to take the deal. The Holiday Inn declined to comment.
The deal with the city is one of more than 140 that is now benefiting the hospitality industry beyond filling otherwise empty rooms: An analysis of records shows that in many cases, the city is paying premium daily rates to house the migrants — forking over $311 a night at the two-star Holiday Inn Express on Kings Highway in Brooklyn and $200 a night at the once-posh Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan that shuttered during the pandemic.
The hotels range from seedy, “hot-sheets” rented by the hour to historic, century-old Midtown Manhattan palaces that have made cameos in Hollywood movies. They’re helping house the more than 72,000 migrants who’ve entered the five boroughs over the last year from Venezuela, El Salvador and other Latin American countries.
“It is a feature of emergency procurement that you pay through the nose,” City Comptroller Brad Lander said of the city’s arrangements with hotels. “If you could reduce the cost of hotel rooms even modestly you would save a lot of money.” --->READ MORE HERE
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