Travelers hoping to book a hotel room in New York City this summer might be surprised to find that 20 percent of the city’s hotel rooms have been converted into shelters for illegal immigrants and homeless people, causing the city’s available rooms to dry up and hotel prices to skyrocket.
According to a recent report: The New York TimesNew York City has about 680 hotels, 135 of which are serving as evacuation shelters.
“Make sure your asylum hearing is held in New York. … You’re shooting yourself in the foot if you hold your court hearing in Texas.”
New York City currently has 2,812 fewer hotel rooms than it had just before the coronavirus-related government shutdown in 2020. This decline in supply coincides with a surge in demand as tourism returns to pre-COVID levels.
These economic changes, combined with a significant decline in short-term Airbnb rentals, are causing rental costs to skyrocket. The year after New York City began accepting a large influx of illegal immigrants, the average cost of a New York City hotel room rose 8.5% from $277.92 in 2022 to $301.61 in 2023.
Many of these rooms are in hotels once frequented by middle-income tourists, who some say are likely to be hardest hit by the changes.
“I really believe this has allowed two-star, two-and-a-half-star hotels to become bolder and take advantage of the situation to charge prices they probably wouldn’t have been able to charge otherwise,” said Sean Hennessy, a hotel industry adviser and clinical associate professor at New York University.
Many of these hotels were struggling before hordes of illegal immigrants began pouring into the city, and some have been extensively renovated to accommodate them — the Roosevelt, for example, has since turned its lobby into an immigrant processing center.
Some hotels will likely close for good once the migrant crisis is over. “Some hotels will never come back to the hotel industry,” argues Vijay Dandapani, president and CEO of the New York City Hotel Association.
As a sanctuary city, New York City became legally obligated years ago to provide a bed for every migrant who comes to the city, so it now pays participating hotels a minimum of $185 per room per night, even if the rooms are available.
Squatters and homeless guests staying in the rooms will enjoy amenities such as “housekeeping every other day and fresh towels and linens at least once a week,” The Times reported, citing sources.
Carlos Arellano, who used to work at the Row NYC hotel, which is now a shelter, Fox Business He said these migrant guests did not value the accommodation they were given and agreed with presenter Stuart Burney that the hotels were being “vandalised”.
“They’re ruined. They’ll never go back to the way they were before,” he said.
Arellano also alleged that some hotels charge the city, and even taxpayers, for luxuries such as hiring “home school teachers” for immigrant children who don’t want to attend public school. “They find every little excuse to charge more,” Arellano said.
Arellano even suggested that illegal immigrants should be warned at the border to seek refuge in New York City, where they could access a legal system more sympathetic to their plight.
“I heard this while talking to migrants at the border. [] They … adjust,” he said.
“They say to each other, ‘Have your asylum hearing in New York, because there’s a judge in New York who leans a certain way that will give you more time. If you have your court hearing in Texas, you’re shooting yourself in the foot.’ So they say to each other, ‘Have your asylum hearing in New York, because there’s a judge in New York who leans a certain way that will give you more time. If you have your court hearing in Texas, you’re shooting yourself in the foot.'[Have a court hearing] When you get to New York, claim your free hotel and come back to Texas, because if you do it in Texas, it’s not going to work.”
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