First you saw them, then you didn’t.
After days of migrants lined up and sleeping on the ground outside the Roosevelt Hotel, they were suddenly allowed inside the makeshift processing center after Mayor Eric Adams paid a midnight visit Wednesday.
Why then and not before?
Meanwhile, migrants are moving into the McCarren Park Play Center as part of new plans for shelters in any available space, with even Central Park at risk.
Will the opened-then-closed facilities return to Randall’s Island or the Orchard Beach parking lot?
What happens when it again gets cold?
A year into the crisis, City Hall (and Albany) still have nothing but slap-dash, ad hoc responses to this crisis, other than to rattle a tin cup and call for expedited work permits.
For decades, New York liberals basked in the self-righteous glow of residing in a “sanctuary” city.
But now the whole town is having to live up to it, in the middle of a housing shortage.
So far, it’s barely touched most of the city, but that’s changing as they keep arriving, roughly 500 a day.
The mayor warns the crisis is coming “to a neighborhood near you.”
Something has to give, whether it’s the “right to shelter,” our “sanctuary city” status or the civic order itself.