The Big Apple has taken in an average of 90 migrants each day since July of last year, a crisis that has caused city spending to balloon and forced Mayor Eric Adams to slash other agencies’ budgets, The Post has learned.
Approximately 32,000 migrants are now living in city taxpayer-funded housing, according to a March 29 estimate from the city’s Office of Management and Budget in an application to the Biden administration for more help from DC.
OMB Director Jacques Jiha warned the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Office of Response and Recovery (ORR) that the city “cannot shoulder an ongoing massive and unexpected burden on its own without substantial risk to its financial stability.”
Jiha asked ORR assistant administrator Melissa Forbes for the entire $350 million in its migrant assistance pot – plus an extra $300 million – to plug the $654 million hole sustained by the city on housing and providing services to migrants between July 1, 2022 and Feb. 28 2023.
However, that amount would be a mere down payment if Jiha’s prediction that the expense will grow to $1.4 billion by June 30 — and $4.3 billion by the end of 2024 — comes true.
So far, Gotham has only received a paltry $8 million in federal funding to date after an initial $1 billion request.
On Feb. 28, the Department of Homeland Security announced it would make $350 million available through FEMA’s Emergency Food and Shelter Program “to help local communities around the country better manage the costs of noncitizen arrivals.”
A FEMA rep told The Post in a statement the program’s board will decide by May 31 where the $350 million is awarded.
So far the Biden administration has not promised to grant additional funding and Gov. Hochul’s state budget proposal pledged $1 billion in migrant aid over two years – still a fraction of Jiha’s estimated costs.
“New Yorkers have to realize that this is a significant budget hit,” said Andrew Rein, president of the fiscally conservative Citizens Budget Commission.
“You have to think about how long people will be in shelter,” he added, pointing to the city’s four-decade-old “right to shelter” policy – which says officials must provide a bed in a habitable facility to every homeless New Yorker – as partially to blame, especially as there’s no time limit for how long someone can stay.
“Our non-migrant shelter population has been staying longer in shelters over time,” Rein said. “Now, migrants are going to have great difficulty working and that will increase their time in shelters over time.”
The crisis is also now costing the city roughly $383 a night per household – which includes families with kids, adult couples and single migrants – a $20 per diem increase from a previous estimate given by city Emergency Management Commissioner Zach Iscol, which added up to a total of around $4.6 million a day.
Between July of last year and the end of February, Jiha wrote, the average number of migrant households in city-run shelters grew from 828 to 12,642 total – with 7,031 households staying in facilities on an average night.
That figure is expected to grow to 9,751 households living in shelters by the end of the city’s fiscal year June 30.
Last week, the OMB ordered all city agencies to make cuts to spending before the executive budget is released on April 26, pointing to the migrant crisis as the primary driver of Gotham’s financial woes.
