Bronx Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) known as on the town to cease treating his dwelling borough like “a dumping ground” for shelters, because the Adams administration prepares to maneuver hundreds of migrant males to the neighborhood.
“For far too long, the Bronx has been relegated to the status of a second-class borough in New York City and a second-class county in New York State,” the congressman wrote in a letter addressed to Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams this week.
The choice by metropolis officers to decide on the borough as the situation for a brand new, 2,200-bed migrant shelter “is typical of the second-class treatment that the Bronx has historically been given,” Torres fumed within the missive, obtained by The Submit.
Town is about to transform a South Bronx storage facility into a brief shelter for migrant males from the troubled Randall’s Island tent metropolis, which is about to shut subsequent month.
Residents and employees close to the 825 East 141st St. constructing have been outraged, telling The Submit this week that their neighborhood has develop into “oversaturated” with shelters and that metropolis officers didn’t warn them in regards to the new one coming to their neighborhood.
“Neither the State nor the City would ever think of siting a 2,200-bed men’s migrant shelter in the wealthiest neighborhoods—these controversial sitings seem to be reserved only for the poorest communities in places like the Bronx,” Torres wrote within the letter, despatched to Adams and Hochul on Thursday afternoon.
Town pays between $250,000-$340,000 to retrofit the constructing after approving an emergency contract that didn’t undergo the usual bidding course of, public data present.
Torres famous the “staggering cost” of sheltering asylum-seekers as he questioned how a lot the state and metropolis have put in the direction of completely housing New Yorkers displaced by an enormous blaze that ripped by way of an condominium block within the space in January.
The pol additionally pointed to the persistent scourge of medicine gripping the industrial space between Melrose and Mott Haven that encompasses Roberto Clemente Plaza generally known as “The Hub” — asking the place the state and metropolis’s priorities lay.
“The State and the City have spent more resources on siting migrant shelters in the Bronx than either has on permanently housing the displaced families of 2910 Wallace Avenue or on permanently dismantling the open-air drug market in the Hub,” he stated within the letter.
The congressman — as frequent critic of Hochul who’s weighing a run for governor — additionally raised high quality of life points for his constituents.
“The encampment at Randall’s Island reportedly descended into a hotbed of gang violence. Instead of reducing gang violence in the Bronx, the City is relocating gang violence to the Bronx—something that would [also] never be allowed to happen in a wealthier neighborhood,” he stated.
As a closing blow, Torres blasted Hochul for what he stated was her “catastrophic mismanagement of the migrant crisis.”
“The City has been burdened with an ever-expanding right-to-shelter policy that it simply cannot afford,” he seethed.
“Those who pretend that New York has unlimited resources for unlimited migration is lying to themselves and to New Yorkers. The priority should be the People of New York.”
In keeping with metropolis stats, practically 230,000 migrants cycled by way of taxpayer-funded metropolis shelters for the reason that flood of asylum-seekers into the town started in 2022 — and there are actually simply over 50,000 nonetheless within the system.
The best variety of shelters the town was operating at one time was 258, that quantity has now dropped to 190.
Metropolis and State officers didn’t return requests for remark.
