Tuesday, May 28, 2024
Year : 2, Issue: 22
New York City officials are planning to launch a novel resettlement program to help migrants leave city-funded hotel shelters in Buffalo, which some proponents hope will serve as a blueprint for how the city manages the migrant influx moving forward.
The $22 million program would enlist a local nonprofit to relocate up to 539 migrants currently living in Buffalo hotels and help them find apartments, jobs and apply for asylum, according to City Hall spokesperson William Fowler. It’s akin to the decades-old national resettlement system for refugees that advocates have asked the federal government to create for new migrants, who are mostly asylum-seekers.
The migrants in Buffalo are among the roughly 2,000 who have been living in ad hoc shelters upstate funded by New York City. The Adams administration began housing migrants in out-of-town hotels in May 2023, citing a lack of space in local shelters.
The Buffalo program marks a new approach in New York City’s handling of the migrant influx, which has become a fiscal and political quandary for city officials with no clear end in sight. Local immigration advocates have hailed the program as a cheaper, more humane and sustainable approach to managing the crisis — and one that other state and local governments have also begun to pursue.
The tentative deal is being negotiated as Mayor Eric Adams’ administration tightens local shelter rules for migrants in New York City, in an attempt to nudge the newcomers toward finding their own housing.
According to Fowler and New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, the the new nonprofit-run program would eventually replace the hotel shelters in Buffalo run by DocGo, a medical service provider. The company has been mired in several high-profile scandals over alleged waste, fraud and abuse in its $432 million city contract to manage migrant shelters across the state.
He did not say whether the administration had finalized plans to house the rest of the roughly 1,200 migrants currently staying at upstate shelters run by DocGo. The company’s contract will conclude at the end of the year, according to Lander’s office.
Some elected officials and immigration advocates, though, are already lauding the would-be program in Buffalo and suggesting that the city should duplicate it elsewhere across the city and state.
Neither Ryan nor any other proponent of the Buffalo program had a cost estimate for replicating its offerings in New York City, which is currently sheltering some 65,000 migrants — more than 120 times the number covered in the Buffalo contract.
All told, more than 200,000 migrants have gone through New York City’s shelter intake system since the spring of 2022. Mayor Adams’ office has projected that the city will spend more than $10 billion on migrant care through the end of June 2025.
Some refugee resettlement providers also point to potential concerns for the Buffalo program, citing the slow pace of a similar state resettlement program and asylum-seekers’ long waits to obtain work permits.
Meanwhile, Fowler echoed Adams’ longstanding pleas to President Joe Biden and Congress for more federal aid, expedited work permits and a national resettlement strategy for migrants.
Source: Gothamist
