NYC paying $625K to bus migrant kids from mega tent shelter
The migrants kꦏeep on coming — and the costs continue to🌃 go up.
Dozens of asylum seekers battled freezing temps while sleeping on the sidewalk in the East Village just for a chance at getting back into NYC’s overwhelmed shelter system on Wednesday.
And now the city is shelling out hundreds of thousands of dollars to bus some 200 asylum-seeking kids to school from the isolated shelter at Floyd Bennett Field, which is already costing $1.7 million a month.
The Department of Education is paying $1,500 per bus with three added vehicles to shuttle kids each day off the national park to a ꧑subway stop where they will still have to ride the rails with ജa city-paid MetroCard to the distant schools they were assigned to.
Schools officials꧅ testified before the City Council Wednesday that their costs through October have already surpassed th🧜e entire prior fiscal year by 43%.
In total, the busing from Floyd Bennett is set to cost $625,000 this year — and there’s still plenty of room left in the shelter.
Currently, there are only about 620 asylum seekers,195 of whom are kids, living in the shelter that was described as a “transportation desert,” city officials said this week.
“Unfortunately, we don’t place students [in shelters],” DOE Chief of Staff Melissa Ramos said. What we do know is wherever they go… they have a right to stay in their school.”
The number is slowly rising at the post witnessed two busses arrived with migrants Wednesday morning at the Brooklyn facility — one with just four people and one with seven. Another bus was seen taking about 25 migrants on what a guard said was a trip to a Salvation Army store with $25 vouchers.
Council members railed against the 60-day cap for asylum-seeking families calling the moves “extremely challenging.”
“First, DHS and other relevant agencies have placed students in shelters extremely far from their schools,” said Councilwoman Shahana Hanif, adding, “students attending schools in my district, in Park Slope, that’s Brooklyn, have been placed in a shelter in Jamaica, Queens.
“Second, due to the already existing transportation staffing shortage, it is difficult to arrange adequate busing for students at their new addresses.”
The added costs to the mega tent shelter came to light Wednesday as the Adams administration’s 60-day cap for migrant families starts to go into effect.
Families at th𝔍e Row Hotel in Times Square wer♈e recently told they need to be out of their rooms next month.
If the families have no place to go, they will ha♊ve to line up again at the Roosevelt Hotel, where the city processes new migrant arrivals and will soon handle the reentry process for families.
Previously, single migrants who reached their limit could reapply at any city f🌠acility, but, as of last week, they can only apply to get back into former St. Brigid School on the Lower East Side.
As a result, hundreds of migrants have lined the area of East 7th Street streets day and night to try to get a spo🌃t in the shelters.
The Pos⭕t captured dozens of freezing asylum seekers huddled under blankets and behind makeshift walls to block the wind over the last tw🤡o days.
With more than 66,000 currently in the city’s care and thousands more arriving each week, the city has prioritized new migrants for beds, leaving those reapplying sometimes waiting days.
According to the city, fewer than 20% of migrants who are issued notices to leave tꦦhe shelters have reapplied.
City Hall spokesperson Kayla Mamelak said the Adams administration “is the last place where blame should be laid.”
“As the temperature starts to drop, we will continue to do our best to keep the line indoors, and provide an indoor waiting room for migrants when the center is closed,” the spokesperson added.
