The "blame everyone but the criminals" strategy being employed in most major U.S. cities - and contributing to the increase in crime while emboldening future criminals - doesn't show signs of stopping anytime soon.
Case in point? The auto thefts in Seattle have gotten so bad that city attorneys in the liberal-run utopia are hilariously suing the manufacturers of Hyundai and Kia for failing to install anti-theft technology on their vehicles.
Talk about missing the point.
As Axios pointed out, auto thefts across the country have been on a surge over the last few years. In Seattle, Hyundai and Kia thefts were 620% higher than other auto brands. Perhaps this is what has motivated Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison to sue the manufacturers.
Most thefts have taken place in Northgate, Capitol Hill, Central District and Beacon Hill, the report says. "The city is seeking unspecified damages and asking the car manufacturers to fix the problem," Axios wrote.
The suit claims that "Hyundai and Kia failed to use immobilizer technology that ensured car ignitions could not be started without their keys long after other carmakers had adopted the same technology". This made the two brands of vehicles "easier to steal", the report says.
It also blames YouTube videos that "showed how to steal car models simply by removing a plastic piece under the steering wheel and using a USB cord and turning it like a key".
This, of course, takes the focus away from the rise in criminals attempting to get into property that isn't theirs to begin with. Perhaps someone should inform that the first thing someone needs to do to steal a car, is break and enter into property that isn't theirs. Maybe that'll help realign expectations before this suit is hastily thrown out of court.
Hyundai rightfully dismissed the lawsuit as "improper and unnecessary", telling Axios that "Hyundai Motor America has made engine immobilizers standard on all vehicles produced as of November 2021." They also said that "Owners of past models can also bring their vehicles to a local Hyundai dealer for the purchase and installation of a customized security kit..."
And, of course, this is why we expect the exodus from cities like Seattle, and those of its ilk, to continue.
Wealthy Russian oligarchs are likely investing in U.S. commercial real estate and trying to sidestepsanctions imposedafter the invasion of Ukraine last year, according to a warning sent to banks by the Treasury Department's financial crimes and intelligence unit.
The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) told banks to be on the lookout for suspicious commercial real estate (CRE) transactions that may be carried out by sanctioned Russian elites, oligarchs, their family members and entities they use to move their wealth.
FinCEN's alert noted that the agency "assesses that sanctioned Russian elites and their proxies are likely attempting to exploit several vulnerabilities in the CRE market in order to evade sanctions."
"Thanks to international pressure and the economic restrictions that more than 30 countries have imposed on Russia for its brutal war against Ukraine, sanctioned Russian elites are increasingly left with fewer options for moving and hiding their ill-gotten wealth," FinCEN Acting Director Himamauli Das said in a statement.
Commercial real estate presents an attractive opportunity to potentially avoid sanctions because they "routinely involve highly complex financing methods and opaque ownership structures that can make it relatively easy for bad actors to hide illicit funds in CRE investments" the alert said.
Private companies and investors involved in the CRE market regularly use trusts, shell companies, pooled investment vehicles and other legal entities on both sides of transactions. Those legal structures allow investors to limit their legal, tax and financial liability.
CRE transactions also typically involve multiple layers of those legal entities and may have numerous investors behind them, which can make it challenging for financial institutions to identify all the beneficial owners of a particular venture.
That lack of transparency and stability of returns has made the transactions particularly attractive to foreign investors and entities. Foreign investors tend to make up a significant portion U.S. CRE transactions – the FinCEN alert notes that 8.4% of transactions in a 2021 survey involved at least one foreign client living abroad, and the figure was above 10% for several years before the pandemic.
FinCEN identified four methods by which sanctioned Russian oligarchs and elites may attempt to use the CRE market to evade sanctions:
Pooled investment vehicles, including offshore funds, can be used to skirt financial institutions' customer due diligence (CDD) obligations and Bank Secrecy Act reporting requirements. FinCEN notes that even if banks lower their CDD threshold from a 25% stake in the fund to 10% – which is typical for high-risk customers – investors looking to evade sanctions may simply lower their fund just below that threshold to avoid detection.
Shell companies and trusts based in the U.S. or abroad may be used by sanctioned Russian elites to conceal their ownership in a CRE property, particularly in high-value properties with multiple layers of legal entities and trusts. Legitimate real estate development businesses and asset management companies may unwittingly be drawn into sanctions evasion schemes through the use of these structures.
Third parties – including relatives, friends or business associates – may be utilized by sanctioned Russian elites or their proxies to set up the legal entities used in illegal CRE transactions.
Inconspicuous CRE investments that provide stable returns can be attractive for sanctioned Russian elites and their proxies because they're less likely to be noticed by the general public or draw unwanted attention. FinCEN notes these may "vary tremendously in kind" and are just as likely to be attempted in small- to mid-sized urban areas as in the largest cities.
FinCEN is an agency within the Treasury's Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence that gathers financial intelligence and seeks to combat money laundering, financing of terror groups, and other financial crimes. When banks file suspicious activity reports about transactions suspected to be illegal in nature to the Treasury Department, FinCEN is the subagency that analyzes them and makes them available to law enforcement officials for their investigations.
The White House announced Wednesday it is taking strategic steps to protect renters, including setting up limits on egregious rate hikes. Critics, however, have called out the Biden administration’s one-size-fits-all program that makes changes for renters at the expense of landlords.
“We’ve seen it for so many years, and it’s very frustrating,” American Apartment Owners Association director Alexandra Alvarado said during Grady Trimble’s report on “The Big Money Show” Wednesday.
“[Mom-and-pop landlords] are not being treated differently, even though it affects them much more than it would affect any large company with thousands of units. They have room for it. Landlords that have a few units don’t.”
In addition to limits on “egregious” rate hikes, the White House addressed several actions it plans to take in its commitment to renters. The actions include collecting information on how tenants are screened, updating guidelines on anti-competitive information sharing among landlords and providing legal help to tenants who are evicted.
Rent is one of several products and services to skyrocket in price following the COVID-19 pandemic and amid rampant inflation.
The Biden administration has taken steps to protect renters during the height of the pandemic, supporting an eviction moratorium and bragging that it has prevented millions of evictions.
Landlords, however, have also seen state-level attempts to protect renters at their expense.
New York City is considering the “Fair Chance for Housing Act”, which went before the New York City Council’s Committee on Civil Rights on December 8th. The bill is being backed by at least 30 of the council’s 51 members, The New York Post reported.
The act would strip landlords of the ability to perform criminal background checks on prospective tenants.
In addition to being supported by a significant number of lawmakers, New York City Mayor Eric Adams has suggested he is open to working with lawmakers on the proposal.
“No one should be denied housing because they were once engaged with the criminal justice system, plain and simple,” a spokesperson for the mayor’s office told Fox Business in a statement. “We will work closely with our partners in the City Council to ensure this bill has maximum intended impact.”
Critics argue the bill would put safety at risk in a city flooded with rising crime.
At the federal level, the Biden White House’s plan seeks to “increase fairness in the rental market and further principles of fair housing.”
The White House also revealed in its announcement Wednesday that it published the Blueprint for a Renters Bill of Rights. The blueprint is “is intended to support the development of policies and practices that promote fairness for Americans living in rental housing.”
The efforts of the Biden administration and cities like New York City have landlords concerned, particularly those who are smaller, mom-and-pop landlords. They note that rental prices work the same as supply and demand in the broader housing market.
“We have seen rent increase drastically over the past couple of years, but the landlords argue that’s supply and demand at work. They also say that’s one of the reasons prices are coming down in some of the largest cities in America,” Trimble concluded in his report.
What is happening with homebuilders and thenew home salessector as we head into the springhousing market? We have had some conflicting data points recently. On the one hand, cancelation rates have been rising. On the other hand,mortgage rateshave gone down more than 1% since Oct. 20, 2022.
The builders’ stock prices have done well as mortgage rates have fallen, and this illustrates the simplicity of the homebuilders’ position: their story is really about mortgage rates and moving products.
The builders sell homes as if they were a commodity: they build and sell to make the most money possible and move on. The builders don’t like to see supply of existing homes growing for fear that their buyers might cancel on them. The growth of supply means demand is getting weaker, which will require builders to give more incentives to buyers.
Now, they want to ensure that the buyers who are still qualified are still there to close the deal when homes are ready to move into. This makes them much more efficient sellers than existing homeowners, who need to find another house once they sell. The builders don’t have that problem — they just want to get homes off their books as soon as possible.
So, as the 10-year yield has fallen along with mortgage rates, investors are anticipating the builders can sell more of their products once they’re ready to be moved into. This is the biggest reason why homebuilder stocks have done so well recently.
How many new homes are out there?
The latest Census report shows that 71,000 new homes are completed and good to go, which is close to the historical average for new homes completed of 80,000 to 100,000.
Here’s the breakout:
71,000 new homes have been completed: 1.4 months of supply.
291,000 homes are still under construction: 5.7 months of supply
99.000 homes have yet to be started: 1.9 months of supply
As you can see, this is not a lot of homes when you consider the population of the U.S. The builders actually lucked out here because back in 2007, we had over 4 million active listings of existing home, which are usually cheaper than comparable new homes. Based on the last NAR existing home sales report, we only have 970,000 active listings — this is the second-lowest level ever in recent history going into January.
New home sales are still historically low
From Census: New Home Sales Sales of new single-family houses in December 2022 were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 616,000, according to estimates released jointly today by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. This is 2.3 percent (±18.5 percent)* above the revised November rate of 602,000, but is 26.6 percent (±13.2 percent) below the December 2021 estimate of 839,000. An estimated 644,000 new homes were sold in 2022. This is 16.4 percent (±3.8 percent) below the 2021 figure of 771,000.
As you can see below, new home sales haven’t gone anywhere for some time now, and the previous months’ data tends to get revised lower. The headline number doesn’t account for cancelation rates. So, in reality, we wont see movement here until mortgage rates get low enough for the cancelation percentage to decline.
For homebuilders, the monthly supply of new homes is still too high
From Census: For Sale Inventory and Months’ Supply, The seasonally adjusted estimate of new houses for sale at the end of December was 461,000. This represents a supply of 9.0 months at the current sales rate.
The monthly supply for new homes is still too high; this is why housing permits are falling noticeably lately. The builders never want to oversupply a market because that would ruin their business model.
My rule of thumb for anticipating builder behavior is based on the three-month supply average. This has nothing to do with the existing home sales market; this monthly supply data only applies to the new home sales market, and the current 9 months is too high.
When supply is 4.3 months and below, this is an excellent market for builders.
When supply is 4.4 to 6.4 months, this is an OK market for the builders. They will build as long as new home sales are growing.
The builders will pull back on construction when the supply is 6.5 months and above.
I do understand why certain people, especially 2008 housing crash people, are confused about why the homebuilders’ stocks have rallied so hard recently. But since Oct. 20, mortgage rates have been heading lower, which means bond yields have headed lower. This traditionally means money goes into the builder stocks — they’re not expensive stocks and now have a much better balance sheet, like U.S. homeowner households, as seen in the chart below.
On the economic side of the equation, we still have a lot of work to do here. The builders have to work off the backlog of homes, but instead of 3%-4% mortgage rates, they’re dealing with 6% plus mortgage rates, which means they have to provide many incentives to make sure those homes sell. Since mortgage rates have fallen, the homebuilder confidence index has stopped falling, and we have had an uptick recently. The point I am making here is that it’s about rates now.
As long as bond yields don’t reverse course and mortgage rates don’t go higher, the story should stay the same. However, if mortgage rates can actually get down toward 5%, the homebuilders will be more excited, as this was the level last year that got more buyers into their market. Plus, they might not need to discount so much by then.
However, until that bridge is crossed, the builders will grind this out, finish up their backlog of homes and try to close as many deals as possible.
A BACKLASH AGAINSTindustrial-size solar farms is brewing. At least 75 big solar projects were vetoedacross the United States last year, compared to 19in 2021. And between January 2021 and July 2022, planning permission for 23 new solar farms was rejectedacross England, Wales, and Scotland, when only four projects were refused between 2017 and 2020—representing the highest rejection rate in five years. Decarbonization, to some extent, risks getting bogged down by planning objections. People very often don’t want solar farmsin their backyard.
France, though, appears to have a solution: transforming its parking lots into solar farms nationwide. The French Senate has approved a bill requiring new and existing lots with more than 80 spaces to be at least half covered with canopies of solar panels that sit over the parking spaces. Assuming the bill comes into effect later this year, parking lots with more than 400 spaces must be compliant by 2026; smaller ones with 80 to 400 spaces will be given until 2028.
Because they’re in abundance and cover large areas, parking lots are obvious candidates for doubling up as solar arrays. But that’s only part of the potential benefit. It makes sense aesthetically and logistically too—mass parking tends to be right next to energy-hungry urban areas, and it’s hard to make a vast asphalt lot any uglier. It’s a “no-brainer solution to providing clean electricity without wasting space,” says Joshua Pearce, professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Western Ontario.
Solar panels need a lot of space to generate meaningful electricity, so the popular strategy up until now has been to spread vast quantities of photovoltaics across sparsely populated, undeveloped regions. Land there is cheaper, there are fewer locals nearby to object, and panels in such setups are easier to manage. There is a cost though: Rural solar farms crowd out other land uses, including agriculture, and can have deleterious impacts on local ecosystems. The 2,300-acre Aratina Solar Project being built near Boron, California, for instance, will destroy 4,276 western Joshua trees during construction.
Transmitting rurally generated electricity to urban settings also requires cabling infrastructure, which is expensive, ugly, and inefficient. Even in properly maintained grids, energy is lost when transmitting electricity over long distances, and these losses rise as temperatures increase. “With climate change, you’re looking at wasting electricity,” Pearce says.
So there’s real appeal to installing photovoltaics closer to urban areas—if you can do so without encountering resistance. And a promising strategy is to look for spaces in urban spaces themselves. From rooftops and vacant lands to industrial sites and airports, there are spaces in and around every town and city that could in theory house solar panels. A 2015 study concluded that within California’s cities and other developed areas, there’s sufficient solar development potential to power the state three to five times over. Germany, meanwhile, has introduced tax breaks for anyone using rooftop photovoltaics. “In order to address the climate crisis, we need to install all the solar we can, and some of this needs to be multifunctional, meaning not simply using the land for producing power,” says Alex Nathanson, founder of Solar Power for Artists, a design studio and education platform for solar power.
But it’s hard to think of an urban area better to use than the parking lot. Besides being unpleasant on the eye, they’re normally pretty large, meaning they have great energy-generating potential.
According to a 2021 study Pearce coauthored, installing solar panels over the parking lots of the 3,751 Walmart supercenters spread across the US alone could generate the same amount of electricity to that of around a dozen coal-fired power plants. (Even if you account for the part-time nature of solar power, Pearce believes you could permanently shut down two, maybe even three such plants in sunnier regions if covering these Walmart lots.) In France, the government believes solar canopies could generate up to 11 gigawatts of renewable energy, or the equivalent power of 10 nuclear reactors. That’s around 8 percent of the country’s entire electrical output.
Installing solar canopies could be helpful for drivers too. They’ll provide shade in sunny, warm weather, potentially reducing the need for air conditioning when people jump into their cars, while in winter they’ll provide shelter from rain and snow. If the vehicles parked beneath them are electric, the energy generated could also be directly delivered to these cars. At present, most commuters charge their electric vehicles at home, outside of regular working hours. The freedom to charge when shopping or at work could allow them to bypass peak prices.
Hooking up parked EVs to photovoltaic canopies could even help balance the grid. Because the traditional grid doesn’t have energy storage capacity, the power fed into it must match the power being consumed—too much power on the grid is a problem. With solar, especially during peak sunshine hours, this can mean that production has to be switched off. But if you could store excess energy in EV batteries on site, you could maximize the potential of solar power during times of peak generation.
“During the day they can store energy,” says Nathanson of parked EVs. “During peak power consumption times, around early evening, they can feed power back to the grid.” Using so many independent pieces of equipment in conjunction with the grid—and making sure no one ends up short of energy—would require a fair amount of smart automation. It would also need bidirectional charging equipment, which at the moment isn’t widely used. But the potential to be smarter with solar is there.
Not every parking lot can be transformed into a power plant, though. With some there might be too much shade, perhaps because of tall buildings nearby. In countries toward the north of the globe, where the sun sits lower on the horizon, long shadows will be a bigger issue, particularly in winter. In other lots, panels might reflect sunlight into nearby buildings or, worse, roads, warns Dylan Ryan, lecturer in mechanical and energy engineering at Edinburgh Napier University in Scotland. “Are we going to be throwing sunlight into the eyes of the people who work across the street?”
The biggest concern, though, is cost: Installing a solar panel above a parking space costs several times more than installing one on the ground or on a rooftop because of the need to build the supporting structure. (These costs are likely to be bigger in, say, the United Kingdom than southern Europe, because parking lots there don’t already have sunshades.) One of the lingering questions over France’s proposal is how parking lot operators will pay for these installations. Without subsidies, Pearce says, it’s hard to envisage too many operators installing nonmandatory solar canopies, because of the required investment.
Of course, parking lot operators could claw back their upfront investment by charging customers to plug in their EVs, or they could use the electricity themselves in whatever business their parking lot is serving. Or the electricity could just be sold back to the grid. “Whether you’re just selling the electricity to the grid, or you’re just using the electricity in your business, you are going to be paying less for electricity overall,” says Pearce.
None of this is to say that solar farms belong only in urban areas. But there’s a clear benefit to having more solar energy generated closer to where people are—and a clear need to find a way to do this that doesn’t get tripped up by Nimbyism. Using parking lots for solar farms gets around this problem, and on these grounds, France’s legislation is a huge, though aggressive, step in the right direction. “You’re taking advantage of what’s essentially free real estate,” says Ryan.
Over two dozen U.S. representatives on Friday called on top U.S. climate envoy John Kerry to urge the United Arab Emirates to withdraw its appointment of the head of its state oil company as president of the COP28 climate summit it will host this year.
The 27 Democratic members of Congress, led by California Congressman Jared Huffman, sent a letter to Kerry calling on him to persuade the future U.N. climate summit host to withdraw the appointment of Sultan Al Jaber, head of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, who is charged with shepherding the next round of climate negotiations.
The lawmakers said the appointment jeopardizes the climate talks, which they say are already negatively influenced by the presence of fossil fuel lobbyists.
"It risks undermining the very essence of what is trying to be accomplished," they wrote to Kerry.
"Furthermore, as some of us have urged future COPs should require any participating company to submit an audited corporate political influencing statement that discloses climate-related lobbying, campaign contributions, and funding of trade associations and organizations active on energy and climate," they added.
On Jan. 12, Kerry congratulated the UAE on the selection of Jaber.
In an interview with Reuters last month, Kerry said having an oil state host the COP is a positive move because "it's so important that you have an oil and gas producing nation step up and say we understand the challenge of the climate crisis."
Al-Jaber, also UAE's minister of industry and technology and its climate envoy, will help shape the conference's agenda and intergovernmental negotiations to build consensus, his office said in a statement.
Campaigners and some delegates criticized COP27, saying fossil fuel producers had watered down emission reduction ambitions and benefited from sympathetic treatment from Egypt, a natural gas exporter and frequent recipient of Gulf funds.
Somehow, progressive “help” for the little guyalways winds up hurting him. The latest? A survey from the Community Housing Improvement Program. It shows that 75% of responding landlords, who manage rent-stabilized housing units in the city (there are around a million), have been forced to delay critical repairs — including on boilers and roofs.
That 2019 law hamstrung owners who need to raise rent in order to cover repair and improvement costs, and the earthquake it caused continues to ripple: 55% say they’re backing off security upgrades (a necessity in our crime-ridden city); 41% have stopped switching to LED lights, a pet project of the same Dems who backed the law; 26% are forgoing tech improvements to fuel efficiency in heat and hot water.
So renters in these units pay low rent but suffer consequences, as necessary but unaffordable repairs get postponed. Worse, an estimated 35,000 apartments stand vacant because repairs needed to rent them out now lie beyond the financial grasp of the landlord — further constricting housing supply and driving up prices, again hurting those who can least afford it.
And the ugly trend has only been supercharged by runaway inflation: 80% of CHIP’s members report that operating expenses have skyrocketed more than 15% since 2019, far above the legally allowable rent hikes.
When Albany passed the law, people capable of basic arithmetic predicted this would happen. Alas, they were right. And if this kind of legislation is how progressives “help,” who needs it?
When Hurricane Ian roared into Southwest Florida last September, the state’s insurance industry was already at breaking point. Ian caused the second-biggest insured loss in history with damage estimated at between $50 billion to $65 billion; only Hurricane Katrina in 2005 caused more destruction.
Now, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is doing his best to attract more private insurance companies to his state, to plug a gaping hole in available policies for homeowners who are running out of options.
More than a half dozen private insurers have already been declared insolvent in the past year, another half dozen are teetering and others have just thrown in the towel and left the state. The trend mirrors what is going on in Louisiana as well. In the last two years, more than 20 companies have gone under or withdrawn from the state, forcing hundreds of thousands of families to pay higher premiums or go without coverage.
"We are certainly in a crisis," said Louisiana's Insurance Commissioner Jim Donelon.
For Floridians, it’s becoming increasingly harder to find affordable home insurance, and they’re often forced to enroll in the state-backed insurer of last resort called Citizens Property Insurance Corp., with policies that can run up to $6,000 per year and don't include flood protection.
"It remains a problem and the cost then goes up because it's not only the $5,000 it's costing me; In a non-flood zone, I need flood insurance, in the event there is a flood it's another $750, it's almost $6,000," George Kyritsopoulos, a Jupiter, Florida, resident told FOX Business.
DeSantis regularly cites one of the state’s biggest insurance problems – lawsuits. Florida accounts for just 9% of claims in the U.S. but 79% of all home insurance lawsuits. The state legislature is trying to stabilize the insurance market and has passed several bills that aim to stop the proliferation of litigation.
One new regulation ends the so-called one-way attorney fees that forced insurance companies to pay plaintiffs if they lost a suit but not the other way around. Another key change targets fraudulent roof claims that are made possible when homeowners sign over their "assignment of benefits" to an unscrupulous contractor who will sue for repairs that don’t exist. That loophole has now been closed.
But even insurers that have stayed in Florida have made their eligibility requirements more stringent and in some cases dropped policyholders who don’t meet the higher standards.
Florida’s own insurance program now has more than 1 million customers. In some parts of the state it’s the only game in town and as a consequence, an estimated 12% of Floridians have no home insurance at all.
Another hurricane season begins in five months and with Florida attracting hundreds of new residents every day, a chronic lack of affordable home insurance could lead to a crippling financial disaster if another monster storm takes aim at the Sunshine State.
New York City’s “right to shelter” policy does not apply to the tens of thousands of asylum seekers who have sought sanctuary in the boroughs since last spring, Mayor Eric Adams said this week.
The Democrat’s comments on WABC radio’s “Sid & Friends in the Morning” came as officials struggled to accommodate the inundation of migrants in the sanctuary city and implored federal officials to pick up the tab, which Adams has estimated at up to $2 billion.
“The court ruled that this is a sanctuary city,” he told host Sid Rosenberg. “We have a moral and legal obligation to fulfill that. We don’t believe asylum seekers fall into the whole ‘right to shelter’ conversation.
“There’s no more room at the inn, and the reason there’s no more room at the inn is because the federal government is not doing their job,” said Adams, who visited El Paso, Texas, earlier this month to get a firsthand look at the national crisis that is spilling into the city.
Adams says NYC’s “right to shelter” policy does not apply to the tens of thousands of asylum seekers who have sought sanctuary in the boroughs since last spring.Robert Miller
New York City has seen over 41,600 asylum seekers arrive in the boroughs since the spring and has opened 77 emergency shelters and four Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Centers, with two more on the way in Midtown Manhattan and at Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, officials said this week.
The city’s “right to shelter” law is one of the strongest sanctuary city laws in the country, requiring the government to make a roof available to anyone without a home on any given night.
It was put in place on the heels of a 1979 Legal Aid Society lawsuit against the city in defense of six homeless men. The group won the case, enshrining “right to shelter” in law.
A new Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Center was set to open this week at the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal.James Keivom
The Legal Aid Society and Coalition for the Homeless panned the mayor for his comments.
“This is not a responsibility that Mayor Adams can decide to shirk, and he knows better,” the organizations said in a press release.
Mayoral press secretary Fabien Levy hit back at the organization.
The mayor’s comments come as officials struggled to accommodate the inundation of migrants in the sanctuary city.Matthew McDermott
“Legal Aid’s suggestion that the city is flouting it’s [sic] legal obligations couldn’t be further from the truth,” he told The Post in an email. “But, as we have made clear for months, and as Legal Aid even said today, the federal government has an obligation here, as does the state.”
Adams has asked both the state and federal government for support, but has only been refunded $10 million of the $366 million spent so far on the migrant crisis as of last month, Budget Director Jacques Jiha said this week.
Hizzoner had penned a Washington Post op-ed earlier this month calling on President Biden to close off the southern border until migrants’ asylum applications can be processed and outlining a “decompression” strategy to ease the crisis and settle migrants.
Inside the Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Center on Randall’s Island.Matthew McDermott
Millions of migrants were expelled from the border under the Title 42 emergency measure during the pandemic.
Its scheduled expiration last month had led to a surge in people seeking refuge from unstable governments in the Caribbean and Central and South America overwhelming the border.
The measure is still in effect and the Supreme Court is set to hear arguments against letting it expire in February.
