Mayor Eric Adams tried to show progress on the migrant crisis last week, with a deputy saying just one-fifth of adults reapply for shelter once a new time limit on their stays is up.
There’s only one way for Adams to prove he has this disaster under control, though: Shutter the Roosevelt Hotel “welcome center,” and return it to the hotel market.
That Adams is desperate to show improvement is obvious in the thin good news he’s wielding.
Deputy Mayor Anne Williams-Isom told Politico merely 20% of adult migrants have reapplied for shelter after their 30-day time limit expired.
But that’s based on a small sample: Fewer than 4,900 adult migrants have had their stay expire, out of 64,100 people in shelter.
And new 60-day time limits for families haven’t even begun to expire.
Plus, the city is deterring repeat customers in an underhanded way: forcing re-applicants to go from one administrative office to another or sleep on chairs in lobbies, with the city hoping they disappear.
New York must legally challenge its shelter obligation in court, not sneak around it.
Adams is just courting a class-action lawsuit by people denied shelter.
City Hall still hasn’t made such a court motion, instead dancing around the edges, asking for suspensions and modifications.
It’s easy to see why the mayor needs to manufacture good news: Halfway through his first term, his failure to handle the migrant catastrophe threatens every other goal he has set.
Including public safety. Felony crime remains one-third above pre-COVID levels.
Last week, the city canceled a class of school-safety agents, despite the fact student violence has soared.
We need the money for migrant services, topping $4 billion this year.
New Yorkers know Adams continues to flail because there is a physical emblem: the Roosevelt Hotel, in the heart of Midtown.
Opening the Roosevelt’s 1,025 rooms for shelter and its lobby for a “welcome center” in May was the biggest mistake of this 19-month saga.
It sent a signal to the world that New York had the resources to give every newcomer a Manhattan hotel room.
This is a big reason we continue to receive 600 people into “the city’s care,” as City Hall puts it, every day, exceeding springtime levels.
The building’s exterior shows Gotham’s failures to maintain order.
The city has allowed the Roosevelt to go from faded elegance to blighted eyesore within months.
Dozens of mopeds litter the property, even though they are illegal: They don’t have required license plates.
Metal barriers are stacked every which way, and graffiti mars the building. Pot smoke hovers.
To hide indoor mismanagement, windows are covered in black plastic.
The Pakistani government, which owns the hotel, leased it to the city for three years for $220 million. A Pakistani journalist sums it up best.
“Once a very comfortable hotel,” Anwar Iqbal, reporter for Dawn, the country’s paper of record, says in a video, “it has turned into a squalor, into a ghetto.”
“The difference is huge. Grand Central looks very beautiful, very impressive, very clean,” he continues. Other nearby buildings “are equally clean. Then you go” to the Roosevelt. “I don’t know how long this can continue.”
The Roosevelt’s long-term prospects should be good. “It’s in a very posh area,” says Iqbal, “very close to the United Nations,” and an “important landmark.”
Indeed, Iqbal says, holding it back from full profitability before its 2020 COVID-related closure was the fact the Pakistani government was in charge.
“No government can run a commercial venture,” Iqbal observes. “A private owner [would] be able to run it in a better way.”
But the Adams administration, with its three-year lease, has bailed Pakistan’s government out of pressure to find a private buyer.
In doing this, the city harms Midtown’s tourism and business-travel recovery.
Further, City Hall has agreed to fix any damage done by migrants before returning the hotel to Pakistan — damage that accrues with each day.
“The New York government keeps . . . four, five, six people in one room,” says Iqbal, “all crammed up.”
The city can cancel its lease with the Roosevelt with four months’ notice.
Adams should do so — and use the four months to launch a real court challenge to the right to shelter.
Otherwise, come reelection time, the Roosevelt will be — still — a disorderly shelter or an empty hulk.
The mayor loves to attend openings of restaurants and office buildings.
But this is the commercial property whose future he can help direct.
Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.