2,500 migrants to get a home at Brooklyn’s Floyd Bennett Field, $20M to find jobs: Hochul
The Biden administration has finally agreed to lease Floyd Bennett Airfield in Brooklyn to house 2,500 migrants, Gov. Kathy Hochul said Monday — adding the state is doling out another $20 million to help asylum seekers find work.
The lease between the feds and the state is being reviewed, contrary to earlier reports that it was a done deal.
Hochul also announced more help to get asylum seekers legal work status. She said the state would give New York City another $20 million so more than 30,000 asylum seekers can file for work permits to get jobs and exit already overflowing shelters.
Word that the former naval air station, housed in the Gateway National Recreation Area, would be available came after the feds rebuked Hochul’s plan to use the 1,300-acre-plus (2-square-mile) venue for emergency shelter.
“This is something that we’ve been hoping for, for many, many months,” Hochul told reporters, referring to the airfield leasing, at a press conference that followed an unrelated event in the Bronx.
“It’s a big step because the answer one month ago was ‘no,'” she added. “I’m viewing this as a significant development by the administration in Washington that we need more help here.”
The governor said she had been on the phone with officials at the White House working on the deal until 11 p.m. Sunday.
The tentative agreement comes after weeks of delays and back-and-forth between her administration and the White House over using the site to provide temporary housing for the recent arrivals, many of whom are seeking asylum from political violence and economic turmoil in Central and South America.
More than 100,000 migrants have arrived in the five boroughs since 2022.
Roughly half remain in the Big Apple’s strapped shelter system, swelling its population to twice its usual size and forcing City Hall to open hundreds of emergency shelters and other facilities to accommodate the recent arrivals.
New York City is obligated to provide shelter to anyone inside the city who needs a bed under a series of decades-old legal settlements, which the city has moved to suspend as it imposes a 60-day shelter stay limit for single adult migrants
Albany’s newly allocated money would seek to mitigate the planned evictions by linking “at least” 30,000 migrants in public shelters with caseworkers tasked with finding shelter residents more permanent housing and, “when necessary,” guiding them through the process of filing their asylum claims, a press release said.
The $20 million is part of the state’s $1.5 billion commitment to easing the city’s migrant crisis approved by lawmakers in this year’s budget, according to the Democrat’s office.
One issue complicating many migrants’ efforts to find housing is they are not legally eligible to seek employment because the country’s asylum seeker work authorization process takes at least 180 days.
However, Hochul said last week that many out-of-work migrants had failed to apply for work papers, and would be eligible for employment now if they had done so in a timely manner.
Her Monday funding announcement came on the heels of a City Hall effort to provide free legal assistance on the issue at the migrant processing center in the landmark Roosevelt Hotel.
“The path out of this crisis is work authorization,” Hochul said in a statement.
“New York has always welcomed immigrants and new arrivals — and getting asylum seekers on track to work authorization will help them become self-sufficient and come out of the shadows.”
The announcement came several days after Hochul and New York City Mayor Eric Adams traded their own scathing barbs about their respective offices’ handling of the migrant crisis.
The Adams Administration is eying an old Catholic school property it acquired on Staten Island — formerly St. John Villa Academy at 57 Cleveland Place in Arrochar near the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge — as a migrant shelter, sources tell The Post.
The city bought the property in 2018 and planned to convert it into a 1,000-seat public school. It was used as a test and tracing site during the COVID pandemic. City Hall didn’t deny the city-owned site is on a list to house migrants.
“Everything is on the table,” a spokesperson said.
Island lawmakers oppose converting the facility into an emergency migrant shelter.
GOP Councilman David Carr said using the Villa Academy for a shelter would set back plans to open a new school there.
“There’s been a big cry for more gifted and talented seats on Staten Island,” Carr said. “It’s an inappropriate use. The St. John Villa site is in a residential neighborhood.”
