Even as he slashes public services, Mayor Adams is ramping up spending on migrants: This year alone, city taxpayers will spend $4.3 billion to shelter and provide other services to recent arrivals, a 48% increase from the spring estimate.
But what are we getting for all this spending?
The city has finally, begrudgingly handed over its contract for the Roosevelt Hotel, after months of delay — and the document offers more questions than answers.
The Roosevelt Hotel, smack in Midtown, is Adams’ flagship migrant facility.
Open as a welcome center and shelter since May, it’s supposed to demonstrate how heroically the mayor is handling everything, even if President Biden won’t pick up the tab.
Instead, it’s become a physical blight, with graffiti scrawled all over the back, dozens of illegal mopeds strewn every which way, metal grates everywhere, trash overflowing two giant containers placed smack in the street, blacked-out windows.
There’s no evidence Adams ever sends a top deputy over to see what’s going on; the city’s security contractors run the place.
It’s really simple to assess how this mayor is doing. Take a walk over there, and ask yourself: Would Mayor Mike Bloomberg have allowed the Roosevelt, under city control, to fall into this mess? Would Rudy Giuliani? Would even Bill de Blasio?
It’s also a financial blight.
The way in which the city inked its agreement for the Roosevelt’s 1,025 rooms is suspect.
The city didn’t have its homeless-services department sign the contract, even though it is, basically, a homeless shelter now.
Instead, the city did the no-bid deal through its Health and Hospitals Corp., which, though funded and controlled by the city, isn’t a city agency but a separate company.
This sleight of hand means the city can avoid sending the contract to the comptroller’s office for review, a basic checks-and-balances procedure.
So what is the city paying for the Roosevelt’s 1,025 rooms?
The document HHC finally provided, after months of delay, blacks out the “per room per day” amount, citing the Roosevelt’s “trade secrets.”
Such information, HHC says, “if disclosed, would cause substantial injury to the competitive position of the subject enterprise.”
For the same reason, HHC won’t even disclose how many rooms the city has contracted.
This is absurd: To attract customers in normal circumstances, hotels routinely list their room rates publicly, both on their own websites and on travel-booking sites; customers freely compare the prices to get the best rate.
Furthermore, the Roosevelt has no other hotel property in the city.
There is no possibility a potential large customer, such as a convention, can use the city’s data to argue for a similar price for a competing facility.
The Roosevelt has no trade secrets to protect in its room rates.
The only reason to black out the amount is the city doesn’t want to be embarrassed by any difference between what it’s paying the Roosevelt and what the hotel charged in 2019 — often well below $200 a night, according to colleagues who stayed there for work trips.
The city’s secrecy is particularly bizarre when the Pakistani press has reported the room rates: $200 the first year, $205 the second and $210 the third. (The Pakistani government owns the Roosevelt.)
Presumably, Pakistani reporters got this information from their own government, not from New York City — meaning Pakistan, which doesn’t have a free press, has been more forthcoming with basic information than the Adams administration.
These rates are high considering the city itself, through separate contractors, provides services that would normally be paid for by the hotel, such as security, “guest” access and administrative work.
Rooms aren’t cleaned every day but three times a week, another cost savings relative to operating a regular hotel.
Finally, hotels often offer deals to long-term guests, not charging them the per-night rate. The city has gotten no such deal.
New York City taxpayers also will pony up for all available rooms in the Roosevelt, “regardless of whether they are occupied.”
We have no idea how many families are actually staying at the Roosevelt, what turnover looks like and how efficiently the city allocates rooms — the city could be paying for a half-empty hotel, and nobody would ever know.
City Hall continues to beg Washington for billions of dollars in aid for migrants.
But why should Washington pay up when the city continues to try to obscure the most basic information on what it’s doing with its own taxpayers’ money?
Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.
https://nypost.com/2023/12/03/opinion/mayor-adams-hotel-for-migrants-money-pit/
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