New York City is opening its latest checkpoint for recently arrived immigrants, this time converting a hotel near Madison Square Garden into an intake and assessment center with rooms for nearly 300 families and single adults, City Limits has learned.
Riis residents who have spoken with City Limits since the Sept. 2 incident, in which they were incorrectly told their taps may be contaminated, have described spending hundreds of dollars on prepared food and using food stamps to purchase packaged water. Several said they visited their doctors to undergo blood testing, while parents said they have continued to use bottled water to bathe their babies and young children.
For at least the third time in three months Monday, New York City’s homeless services agency violated its legal obligation to provide temporary shelter to anyone who requests it—this time delaying placement for dozens of men seeking a bed at an intake facility on East 30th Street.
La ciudad calcula que unos 6.300 solicitantes de asilo han llegado en autobuses desde la frontera en los últimos meses. Además de encontrar un lugar seguro para alojarse, deben acceder a atención médica, hacer un seguimiento de sus casos de inmigración en trámite y, en algunos casos, intentar reunirse con miembros de su familia de los que fueron separados durante el viaje. Algunos han abandonado el sistema de albergues por completo, alegando motivos de seguridad.
The city estimates that around 6,300 asylum seekers have arrived via buses from the border in recent months. In addition to finding a safe place to stay, they must navigate access to medical care, keep tabs on their ongoing immigration cases and in some cases, attempt to reunite with family members they were separated from during their journeys. Some have left the shelter system altogether, citing safety concerns.
“With years of work, riders pried congestion pricing from a recalcitrant Albany. We intend to see the program fully and fairly rolled out next year. When congestion pricing is implemented, drivers will pay their equitable share to access the most heavily trafficked and transit adjacent neighborhoods in the United States.”
“If everything…is just a question of ‘Does the local community support or not support it,’ the answer will almost, inevitably, always be ‘no,’ so it can’t just be that, it has to be a broader consideration,” the former councilmember said during an interview on the WBAI radio program City Watch.
“It should be abundantly clear that the stamp of a landmark designation alone does not keep a building standing. If financial viability and structural integrity are in question, landmarking should be postponed, until a game plan for rehabilitation is fleshed out.”
At a Council hearing short on details, officials from Mayor Eric Adams’ administration pinned the shelter population rise on newly arriving immigrants from the Southern Border.
After a two-month journey from South America to the U.S. Border and a two-day bus ride from Texas to New York City, immigrants who spoke with City Limits just wanted a bite to eat and a place to rest. “I just want to work and get ahead,” one recently-arrived man said.
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Founded in 1976 in the midst of New York’s fiscal crisis, City Limits exists to inform democracy and equip citizens to create a more just city. The organization is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit funded by foundation support, ad sponsorship and donations from readers.
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