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Randall’s Island migrant shelter to cost NY taxpayers $20M a month — or $10K for every migrant: source

By
Bernadette Hogan and
Jorge Fitz-Gibbon
Published Aug. 13, 2023
Updated Aug. 13, 2023, 3:58 p.m. ET

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.”

Mega-shelter for migrants on Randall's Island.
A new migrant shelter on Randall’s Island will house up to 2,000 asylum-seekers — but at a hefty price.
2,000-bed migrant shelter on Randall's Island.
The mega-shelter on Randall’s Island will cost state taxpayers an estimated $20 million a month. Stephen Yang
Migrant shelter on Randall's Island.
The cost of the Randall’s Island migrant shelter works out to $10,000 per migrant a month if the 2,000-bed facility reaches capacity.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul.
Gov. Kathy Hochul has been struggling to cope with the flood of migrants into the state. Stefan Jeremiah
Randall's Island migrant shelter.
New York City has seen 100,000 migrants from the US border flock into the Big Apple since spring 2022, leaving the Big Apple at “the breaking point,” Mayor Eric Adams has said. Stephen Yang

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.

Meanwhile, Hochul had promised to add Floyd Bennett Field, a former military airbase in Brooklyn, to the list of state-funded shelters — but White House officials refused to sign off on the plan Sunday, dealing her a major blow.

The feds said the plan for the field needs a closer review.