12 billion dollars more

Photo by JQ LLC

NY Daily News  

New York City is on track to spend as much as $12 billion on managing the local migrant crisis by mid-2025 — a staggering price tag that Mayor Adams warned Wednesday will necessitate more “across the board” cuts to city services.

The new City Hall cost estimate — which was first reported by the Daily News ahead of its Wednesday morning release — eclipses the $4.3 billion Adams’ administration previously projected it would spend by July 2024 on housing, feeding and providing services for the tens of thousands of migrants who have arrived since last year.

Under the administration’s revised projection, which was prompted by a recent uptick in migrant arrivals, the city is expected to spend as much as $6.1 billion by July 2024. Costs are then set to surge further, reaching the $12 billion mark by July 2025, according to the projection.

“We are past our breaking point,” Adams said in a speech at City Hall, adding that it “breaks this city’s heart” that dozens of migrants resorted a few weeks ago to sleeping on a Midtown Manhattan sidewalk after being told there was no more room in the city’s overcrowded shelter system.

On average, Adams said, the city is already spending $9.8 million per day on accommodating migrants. There are currently more than 57,000 migrants in the city’s shelters and emergency housing systems, most of them Latin Americans who arrived in New York after crossing the U.S. southern border in hopes of obtaining asylum status, according to Adams’ office.

Due to the ballooning price tag, Adams said his administration is in the process of scaling back services being offered to migrants in the city’s care. Perks like free meals, laundry and hygiene products are likely to be on the chopping block, Adams said.

“Every service must be cut,” he told reporters in the City Hall Rotunda after his speech. “Some of the things we were doing we are not going to be able to do.”

Beyond migrants, Adams said services being offered to New Yorkers are also likely to be trimmed back. “Every service in this city is going to be impacted,” he said.

Adams has already slashed spending at nearly all city agencies over the past year due to fiscal concerns largely driven by the migrant crisis. That has resulted in drastic service reductions, like the recent closure of a city Health Department library that emerged as a key scientific research resource during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The only way the city can avoid further budgetary pain is if President Biden’s administration provides Adams’ administration with more financial and logistical aid, the mayor said.

“The White House can help us now,” Adams said.

Let's go Brandon, show us the money.