By Bernadette Hogan & Jorge Fitz-Gibbon – New York Post
New York taxpayers will dole out $20 million a month to house migrants on Randall’s Island, according to a state source — or $10,000 per asylum-seeker if the site fills all of its 2,000 beds.
The makeshift facility off Manhattan is one of four migrant housing sites fully funded by the state as part of a desperate effort to keep up with the flood of migrants who have New York City at its breaking point.
A well-placed source with the state told The Post over the weekend that the state is providing $20 million a month to run the Randall’s center.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced last week that the migrant crunch in the Big Apple is expected to cost an overall whopping $12 billion for the next three years.
“We are past our breaking point,” Adams said during a City Hall briefing Wednesday. “With more than 57,300 individuals currently in our care on an average night, it amounts to $9.8 million a day, almost $300 million a month and nearly $3.6 billion a year.”
About 100,000 men, women and children seeking asylum have arrived in New York City since the spring of 2022, with more than 57,000 currently staying in 198 emergency shelters in the five boroughs.
The unprecedented influx has spilled out onto the streets of Manhattan, where scores of migrants were forced two weeks ago to sleep outside the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown, which was set up as a processing center.
But the move to put migrant men on some of Randall’s Island’s soccer fields has incensed the local sports community — including even one of Adams’ own commissioners, who spoke out against it.
Vilda Vera Mayuga, head of the city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, circulated petitions to block the use of youth soccer fields for the mega-shelter facility.