Just two more migrants trickled into Mayor Adams’ virtually empty tent city Friday morning — even as nearly 16,000 others were packing the city’s overloaded shelter system.
But as the city’s shelter population reached a new record of 63,578, none of the migrants pushing it to the brink were were being moved out of hotels and into the tents on Randall’s Island.
That’s because, officials say, they can’t force anyone already being housed by the city into the tents, which don’t comply with key provisions of the 1981 consent decree that established New York’s “right to shelter” rule for homeless people.
Those requirements include having at least three feet of space between beds, which doesn’t appear to be the case for the rows of gleaming new cots in the giant, white migrant tents.
Last month, Adams said the landmark right-to-shelter agreement should be amended in response to the city’s migrant crisis, but it’s unclear what steps — if any — his administration has taken to make that happen.
The online docket for the underlying court case — known as Callahan v. Carey — shows no activity since a subsequent decision over eligibility rules was handed down in 2012.
Friday’s arrivals to Randall’s Island came as the mayor of El Paso, Texas, said he was finally ending the cavalcade of buses that’s brought nearly 11,000 to the Big Apple since late August.
The two migrants who climbed out of a blue city van van joined just five who The Post saw arrive there on Wednesday and Thursday.
It’s unclear if any more arrived at other times and City Hall wouldn’t say if that was the case.
The facility was set up to house 500 people and can handle 1,000 with additional staffers, officials have said.
The chair of the city council’s General Welfare Committee, which oversees the Department of Homeless Services, blamed the abundance of empty beds on officials being “a little bit late to the game and the changes that are occurring now at the border.”
“When they were conceptualizing this idea, the situation was different,” Councilmember Diana Ayala (D-the Bronx) said.
“But if they go empty, it’s not a bad thing, because it means the situation is stabilizing.”
But Ayala added, “It’s expensive to erect those tents.”
“That part of it is a shame,” she said.
Ayala also said she thought it would be illegal to move migrants from hotels to the tents.
“They’re temporary intake facilities, these are not shelters,” she said.
On Tuesday, Emergency Management Commissioner Zach Iscol said it cost taxpayers $325,000 to set up the facility and another $325,000 “to demobilize from Orchard Beach” in the Bronx, where the tent city was partially built before flooding from heavy rains forced it to be relocated.
“The rest of the costs we’re still analyzing — we don’t know how many people we will be caring for and a lot of the costs are variable, so many of those ongoing costs we’re now figuring out,” Iscol added at the time.
The Orchard Beach site, which was slated to house 1,000 people, was expected to cost $15 million a month to operate, a source familiar with the matter has told The Post.
During a Friday morning interview on 1010 WINS radio, Adams said he was “happy as heck we only have a handful of people” in the tent city.
“We were really concerned,” he said.
“It was predicted that we could have 100,000 people here. We did what we’ve always done. We didn’t panic. We were prepared.”
Adams also said the facility was “like insurance, based on the unpredictable nature of what was happening in Texas.”
“We’re looking to eventually dismantle it. It was there to serve its purpose,” he said. “We’re going to use the tent now for other means.”
The mayor didn’t elaborate on that plan.
On Wednesday, residents of a nearby homeless shelter on Randall’s Island expressed outrage to The Post over the plush amenities inside the tent city, which offers free laundry service and has a lounge outfitted with couches, flat-screen TVs, Xbox game consoles, pingpong and foosball tables, and popcorn machines.
During a TV interview with Adams on Friday morning, Fox 5’s “Good Day New York” co-host Rosanna Scotto invoked that report while asking why homeless New Yorkers weren’t being allowed to move in.
Adams responded with a laugh before dodging the question.
“A few weeks ago, people were complaining that people who were in the HERRCs [Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Centers], as we call them…that they were treated unfairly,” he said.
“Now this week, people are saying those who are in actual shelters are being treated unfairly. You know New Yorkers. No one is getting any better treatment than the other.”
Adams also said the city was meeting “all of our moral obligations and all New Yorkers are going to be treated fairly.”
https://nypost.com/2022/10/21/only-seven-migrants-at-nyc-tents-with-16k-still-in-shelters/
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