[ No sensible New Yorker should believe for a moment that a stream
of migrants — despite the daunting financial and logistical issues
involved in giving them food and shelter, as required by law — can
literally destroy our city.]
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WHAT ERIC ADAMS IS GETTING WRONG ABOUT THE MIGRANT CRISIS  
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Errol Louis
September 12, 2023
New York Magazine
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_ No sensible New Yorker should believe for a moment that a stream of
migrants — despite the daunting financial and logistical issues
involved in giving them food and shelter, as required by law — can
literally destroy our city. _

In a speech last week, Mayor Eric Adams said the migrant crisis would
“destroy” New York. (Spoiler: It won’t.), Photo: Benny
Polatseck/Mayoral Photography Office // Photo-Illustration:
Intelligencer; New York Magazine

 

To manage the current crisis, Mayor Adams should avoid repeating the
latest round of hype and hysteria about the difficulties of his job
and instead project the attitude of calm competence that residents
expect from City Hall.

“Never in my life have I had a problem that I did not see an ending
to — I don’t see an ending to this,” the mayor said at a town
hall in Manhattan. “This issue will destroy New York City.”

No, it won’t.

New York State [[link removed]], standing
alone, would be the 12th-largest economy in the world, generating an
incredible $2 trillion in economic activity every year — more than
the entire gross domestic product of South Korea or Australia, and
roughly equivalent to that of Canada. Most of that output is driven by
our city and its residents (including the 136 billionaires who live
here), who pay enough in taxes to support a $107 billion municipal
budget [[link removed]].

If, as Adams estimates, helping migrants will cost $4 billion per year
over the next three years — what Mayor Worst Case describes as “a
$12 billion deficit that we’re going to have to cut” — that
amounts to 3.7 percent of the budget. Inconvenient and painful, yes.
But destroy our city? Not even close. A year ago, Adams ordered
agencies to freeze hiring and reduce budgets by 3
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survived.

I doubt Adams consciously intended to supply political oxygen and
talking points to political conservatives, including his 2021
Republican opponent, Curtis Sliwa, who is leading anti-migrant
rallies
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has vowed to challenge Adams in 2025
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More likely, Adams, with all eyes on him at the town hall, was
repeating a favorite tactic: publicly describing dire scenarios on the
mistaken assumption that his words, alone, will inspire a surge of
agreement and support from Albany, Washington, and the general public.
They won’t.

And true to the mayor’s bad habit of refusing to correct or disavow
even obvious exaggerations
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he is now doubling down
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the overheated “destroy New York” rhetoric that the public mostly
wasn’t buying in the first place. Our city is heading into a tough
season for sure — the administration will likely have to shrink or
defer worthy investments in child care, parks, schools, libraries, and
sanitation — but in the short term, the things mostly likely to be
destroyed by the migrant issue are the spreadsheet projections of
Adams’s budget director and the vacation plans of overworked city
employees.

Members of the Adams administration, much to their credit, are pulling
off daily logistical miracles by delivering housing, food, education,
and health services to thousands of newcomers every week and
frantically setting up huge intake centers at Creedmoor Psychiatric
Center
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Island
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and Floyd Bennett Field
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Once people get settled, the city directs them to hotels or makeshift
shelters throughout the city in compliance with the state’s
much-maligned right-to-shelter policy, which mostly consists of
common-sense rules like not placing women and children in congregate
settings, not leaving people to sleep on the street or in city
offices, locating appropriate language interpreters, and so on.

Nearly 40 percent of the 100,000 migrants who have come to the city
have already left their city-provided shelter, either connecting with
family or moving on to another city. Many of the remainder are stuck,
though, unable to secure work permits under federal law for 180 days
after applying for asylum. (Helping migrants with the paperwork on
starting asylum claims is another critical task for city workers.)

The city badly needs federal relief on the jobs front, preferably in
the form of the Biden administration’s granting Temporary Protected
Status to migrants fleeing violent chaos in Venezuela. That act alone
would allow a majority of the migrants coming to New York to start
seeking work. Adams also needs help from Governor Hochul, who has
inexplicably refused to issue the necessary executive orders that
would compel suburban and upstate counties to accept some of the
migrants flooding into New York City. Our state’s proven capacity
to help resettle waves of refugees
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other migrants won’t matter if the governor is too timid to use the
enormous power at her disposal.

And Adams won’t get the help he needs from the state and federal
government by simply screaming (falsely) that New York is about to go
under. Inspiring confidence and building political support in the
midst of a crisis starts with showing the world, despite one’s
personal fears, that success is inevitable if we keep the faith and
work together.

At least one other big-city Democratic mayor, coping with a migrant
wave of its own, has explicitly rejected Adams’s doomsday rhetoric.
“I’m not going to accept the notion that the city of Chicago is
going to be destroyed,” newly elected mayor Brandon Johnson told
the Chicago _Sun-Times_
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“We are a city of big shoulders. We’ve been through difficult
moments and challenges before. And we’re gonna get to the other side
of this. I’m confident of that … I was elected to lead. This is
not a challenge that will overwhelm us.”

That is exactly what a city needs to hear from its leader in a
difficult moment. We also need a detailed public discussion of what
services should be reduced and what new revenue can be raised. Adams
has ordered agencies to prepare 5 percent cuts, but that top-line
number hardly tells the whole fiscal story.

As you read this, our city is owed $2 billion in uncollected fees and
fines — enough, in theory, to cover half a year’s cost of housing
the migrants. Where’s the plan to round up that money? The trusty,
oft-ignored Independent Budget Office
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pointed out that hiring just 50 auditors in the understaffed
Department of Finance could bring the city $165 million a year in
revenue — nearly half a billion over the next three years.

A pied-à-terre tax on apartments owned by non–New Yorkers could
raise $232 million a year, according to the IBO. Cracking down on
building violations by lumping uncollected fines into property-tax
bills would raise another $100 million a year. Using open-source
software for some city operations instead of buying licenses from
private vendors would save $36 million a year. Reinstating a
Bloomberg-era program that paid a bonus to homeless-services providers
whose clients exit city shelters permanently — something we could
really use right now — would save the city $21 million a year.

There’s plenty of fat to be cut and money to be raised. We need a
civic conversation about how to do more than just slash services. And
a mayor ready to do more than tell the public that the end is near.

_[ERROL LOUIS is the host of NY1’s “Inside City Hall,” the
preeminent political news show in New York City. Previously, he served
as a columnist and editorial board member at the New York Daily News
and was a talk show host of WWRL radio._

_He has won numerous journalism prizes, and has taught at the Pratt
Institute, Hunter College, Long Island University, and New York
University. He has a B.A. from Harvard University, an M.A. from Yale
University, and a J.D. from Brooklyn Law School.]_

* migrants
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* Migrant Crisis
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* Immigrants
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* Racism
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* Eric Adams
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* Mayor Eric Adams
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* Kathy Hochul
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* Gov. Kathy Hochul
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* New York City
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* New York State
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* Biden Administration
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