NYC hospitals spending more than $90M to house migrants in Midtown hotels
By
Bernadette Hogan and
February 23, 2023 5:20pm
The Big Apple’s public hospital system plans to spend more than $90 million to house migrants in four Midtown Manhattan hotels through the spring in response to President Biden’s border crisis, The Post has learned.
NYC Health + Hospitals CEO Mitchell Katz has approved $40 million in payments to the four-star Row NYC near Times Square and $28 million to the four-star Stewart Hotel across from Madison Square Garden, according to documents first reported by The City.
Last month, The Post revealed workers at the Row were throwing out nearly a ton of food daily because the migrants living there wouldn’t eat it.
Whistleblowing hotel employee Felipe Rodriguez also alleged that the once-trendy hotel — formerly known as the Milford Plaza, which advertised itself as the “Lullaby of Broadway” — had turned into a “free-for-all” of sex, drugs and violence.
Another $20 million is going to the Watson Hotel on West 57th Street in Hell’s Kitchen, where a group of migrants recently staged a protest against being relocated to a shelter in Brooklyn, and $5.8 million to the historic Wolcott Hotel on West 31st Street.
The planned $93.8 million in spending by H+H — which bypasses normal oversight procedures for city government contracts — follows an Oct. 13 agreement for the hospital system to manage and operate what Mayor Eric Adams calls migrant “Humanitarian Response and Relief Centers,” or HERRCs.
Last week, the seventh HERRC opened in the Wingate by Wyndham Hotel in Long Island City. The two other HERRCs are located in the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal in Red Hook and the world’s tallest Holiday Inn in Manhattan’s Financial District.
The first HERRC, a tent city built at Orchard Beach in The Bronx, never opened due to flooding worries and was replaced by another, short-lived tent city on Randall’s Island.
The city is planning to spend $90 million to house migrants in New York City hotels this spring — including the Watson Hotel in Hell’s Kitchen.
The city’s public hospital system is planning to spend $93.8 million to house migrants in New York City hotels this spring.
Huron Consulting Services, which was involved in H+H’s COVID-19 testing operation, is being paid $18.5 million to help open the HERRCs.
Another company, Rapid Reliable Testing, has an $11.5 million contract to triage arriving migrants.
As of Wednesday, at least 47,600 migrants have flooded into the city since the spring of last year, with almost 30,000 living in 95 taxpayer-funded shelters including the HERRCs, according to official estimates.
Adams has refused to detail his spending on the migrant crisis, which the city Office of Management and Budget recently estimated will total $4.2 billion through mid-2024.
