The influx of poor migrants allowed in by President Joe Biden is spilling out of taxpayer-funded shelters and onto city streets and parks, sparking anxiety among voters, families and city officials.
“That’s a question on everyone’s mind,” said Dave Giffen, executive director of the New York-based nongovernmental advocacy group Coalition for the Homeless. “We’re definitely seeing more people sleeping in public spaces now.”
As the number of migrants continues to rise in New York, officials are growing concerned about the number of border crossers choosing to live outdoors in tents rather than entering city shelters.
One such camp has popped up on Randalls Island, where literally hundreds of tents are regularly pitched by undocumented immigrants. Another has popped up under a highway overpass in Brooklyn. And many more In such camps, The New York Times Recently reported.
The city is already struggling to house 65,000 migrants, and migrants are camping outdoors in tents because they feel unsafe in the huge shelters provided by city authorities. Many migrants in these open-air camps told the Post that there is no order or safety inside the buildings the city has converted into shelters, and that gangs, drugs, illegal activity and human trafficking are rampant in the city-run shelters. Ultimately, they Times They feel safer outside the tents.
Real residents have been complaining about this situation for months. Not just in New York, Denver, Chicago and Bostonas well. In fact, crime rates have risen in almost every place where there are migrant shelters.
In New York City, officials changed a long-standing “right to shelter” rule by placing a 60-day limit on their obligation to provide shelter to homeless people.
But despite the legalese in the updated rules, few people have been turned away from city shelters because officials continue to grant extensions to all migrants who apply — and many who are actually turned away simply reapply to other shelters, where the clock starts running again.
But what concerns city officials is the number of people now choosing to avoid shelters and sleep on the streets.
“That’s not OK,” said Deputy Mayor Ann Williams-Isom, who leads New York’s immigration efforts. “We’re not trying to be pushy, but if the time has passed and the case management is over and they have to leave, then they really have to move on.”
But instead of moving forward, many are simply heading outdoors.
“Fears of violence are driving some migrants to seek safety outside the shelter system.” Times “The migrants sleep on blankets, under tarps stretched across tree branches or crammed into colorful mosaics of camping tents they ordered from Amazon. They pool their money to buy eggs, bread and meat to cook breakfasts and stews to sell or share among themselves,” the report said last Friday.
In some places, such as Randalls Island, tent dwellers scramble to clear their camps each morning to avoid sporadic security and police roundups aimed at preventing the formation of tent cities, but in other places, residents appear to be staying there long-term.
New York isn’t the only Democratic-leaning state trying to tighten restrictions on immigrants. Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey has also begun moving to impose limits on the Bay State’s so-called “right to shelter” law, which prioritizes waiting lists for actual residents and homeless U.S. military veterans over immigrants. Massachusetts has been dogged by criticism in recent years for prioritizing immigrants over veterans and homeless citizens.
With costs fast approaching $1 billion, Massachusetts’ shelter system has become a bottomless pit of taxpayer money.
“We have been saying for months that the rapid growth of the emergency relief shelter system is not sustainable,” Healy said. said“Massachusetts is short on shelter space and simply cannot afford to maintain the current size of the system,” according to WBUR-TV.
According to Center for Migration StudiesMassachusetts’ illegal immigrant population has reached an unsustainable 355,000.
Massachusetts residents have already spent $1 billion on the state’s shelter system; Soar It is projected to reach a further $1.8 billion by 2026. Boston Herald.
But the actual cost is much higher, because that $1 billion is only the cost of housing and does not include the costs of feeding, clothing, educating, and providing free medical and legal assistance to people in the shelter system, nor does it include other social services, such as the costs of food stamps, Medicaid, and other similar programs.
Studies of how much illegal immigration costs the state rarely take into account costs that pile up in other areas: The Bay State’s food stamp program alone, for example, could reach $4.6 million by 2026. And little attention is paid to the cost of incarcerating illegal immigrants who are arrested for crimes, which currently exceeds $27 million a year.
This is the same situation across the country in Illinois, California, Colorado and every other city Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are swamped with waves of illegal immigrants.
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