After months of negotiations, Governor Kathy Hochul on Monday said the state has reached a “tentative contract” with President Biden’s administration to use Brooklyn’s Floyd Bennett Field as a site for yet another large-scale migrant shelter.
The deal comes as two other state-funded massive asylum seeker shelters have come online over the past week: one in the parking lot of the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in eastern Queens and the other on several Randall’s Island athletic fields.
Hochul also announced the state is pouring $20 million into speeding up casework for roughly 30,000 migrants in city shelters to help them exit the system more quickly.
The governor, in a Monday statement, said her administration will work with that of Mayor Eric Adams to erect a new mega shelter for asylum seekers on the federally-owned former naval airfield. The site could provide shelter for over 2,000 newcomers as City Hall’s struggles to house thousands of migrants pouring into the five boroughs each week continues.
“We are feeling optimistic that in the near future, we’ll have a contract review in our hand for an opportunity to house upwards of 2,500 people at this time,” Hochul said following an unrelated press conference in the Bronx on Aug. 21.
“So, that is the process, as I mentioned a week or two ago, that is still ongoing,” she added. “But I feel that progress has been made. And we just have to review the terms.”
Adams, in a statement, thanked Hochul for her administration’s offer to subsidize the site — as the two have clashed in recent weeks over how much the state has done to handle the influx.
“I thank Governor Hochul for her commitment to pay for this site, and I’m looking forward to more of this kind of partnership with our friends in Albany as we manage this ongoing crisis,” the mayor said.
Hochul has been pushing for utilizing the over 1,000-acre airfield, which is now part of the Gateway National Recreation Area in the Marine Park section of Brooklyn, as a space to potentially house migrants since mid-May. She started to float the idea as a new surge of migrants began arriving in the city following the lapse of a federal public health rule that restricted immigration over the southern border — known as Title 42.
The potential commitment of the airfields marks a rare assist from President Biden’s administration, which has done little to help the city navigate the crisis thus far. Adams, Hochul and other local officials have called on the feds for months to provide the city with more financial support and resources to provide for the over 100,000 migrants who have arrived here since last year.
During her remarks, Hochul reemphasized one of her and Adams’ central pleas: for the White House to expedite work authorizations that would allow newly arrived migrants to immediately obtain legal employment. She said allowing migrants to work could also help address a labor shortage throughout the state.
“The ultimate goal, in my opinion, for dealing with this crisis, is to let them work, allow them to legally apply,” Hochul said. “We have two crises. One is a humanitarian crisis, not of our making … the other one is we have a shortage of workers crisis.”
One goal of the state’s $20 million commitment for enhanced case management, Hochul said, is to help more migrants apply for asylum, six months after which they will be able to apply for work permits. The disbursement of the new state dollars is coupled with a color-coded system for identifying which migrants have the most and the least barriers to leaving shelter.
Both announcements come after a state Supreme Court judge earlier this month ordered the state to take a more active role in providing the city with funding and resources to manage the influx. The order was the result of an emergency court conference over the city’s right-to-shelter law called for by the Legal Aid Society, after nearly 200 migrants slept on city streets for nearly a week at the start of the month.
Legal Aid and its client the Coalition for the Homeless, in a Monday statement, applauded Hochul’s pledge of additional resources and said they hope it is the beginning of a “more meaningful commitment” from her administration.
“However, the devil is in the details, and we need more information from the State, including a concrete timeline for transitioning 30,000 new arrivals out of shelter and securing those individuals’ work authorization,” the groups said. “As well as information on the transportation and other critical services that will be made available to new arrivals once Floyd Bennett Field is operational.”
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