Eric Adams orders NYC budget cuts as migrant costs rise

New York’s migrant crisis is growing so bad that the city is being forced to spend tens of millions of dollars more than previously known — and with no end in sight — as Mayor Adams has ordered across-the-board spending cuts, The Post has learned.

On Tuesday, as the administration publicly declared their inability to pay for the influx of immigrants, the city quietly put out a notice that’s spending $20 million more on emergency hotels — and Adams ordered city agencies to cut a combined $1.1 billion each year over the next four years, according to the city’s Office of Management and Budget.

The mayor lamented the belt-tightening in a speech Wednesday.

“The goal is not to go and say, ‘I want to cut services,’ but I think I’ve been very honest with New Yorkers,” Adams said. “I’ve said this over and over again. This issue, every service delivery we have will be impacted and we have to be honest about this.”

Contracts reported in the city record show migrant emergency shelter costs have risen by roughly $20.87 million since city Comptroller Brad Lander released a report on March 7 tracking the city’s overall migrant spending — bringing the total to $420.44 million.

It’s unclear how many of the 108 emergency hotels and Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Centers are covered in the overall spending amount, as the city has yet to release all the contracts tied to each location.

But the figure is roughly half of the $817 million that the OMB said the city spent on migrants between July 2022 and March of this year.

City Hall said the updated $4.3 billion forecast accounts for rising costs of shelter, food and other services for asylum seekers, as the city now estimates they’ll spend $100 million more in fiscal year 2024.

Democratic City Councilman Bob Holden told The Post that President Biden’s and Gov. Kathy Hochul’s administrations need to step up and help. 

“We can’t sustain this. Where is it written that we have to take care of migrants indefinitely and that the taxpayers are on the hook to care for non-citizens?”

A Post report revealed that some migrants don’t have immigration hearing dates for another decade, as the federal system is struggling to keep up with demand. 

Migrants, meanwhile, are having trouble getting jobs to support themselves, as delays are being reported in the working paper application process, which takes six months under the best of circumstances.

“It’s going to take until 2033 to review their application for asylum. They can’t work,” Holden said. “The governor is asleep at the wheel. Biden and our senators Schumer and Gillibrand are ignoring it. Send the bill to the White House.”

Adams has repeatedly said the city can’t sustain the growing number of arrivals and last month announced he’s creating a new Office of Aslyum Seeker Operations.

Kathryn Kliff, staff Attorney at the Legal Aid Society, told The Post the Adams administration is currently recording roughly 150 to 200 individual arrivals daily. 

“It has picked back up again and the last couple of weeks it has gone to 150 to 200 a day. It’s definitely been an uptick,” she said, citing figures her office recieved from City Hall.

Kliff said there’s no time limit for how long migrants can stay in a Department of Homeless Services-run facility – which includes the emergency hotels – thanks to the ‘right to shelter” court settlement between the Coalition for the Homeless and the administration of then-Mayor Ed Koch.

It requires City Hall — which did not respond to requests for comment Thursday — to provide a bed in a habitable facility to every homeless New Yorker.

However, the city could reimpose a time limit for how long migrants living in the eight HERRCs run by the city’s Health and Hospitals system can stay.

Initially, the mega-shelters were designed as temporary facilities with a 96-hour limit, but that rule was removed thanks to the steady crush of arrivals in the Big Apple. 

Around 33,400 migrants are currently living in taxpayer-funded, city run hotels out of 53,000 individuals who arrived in the city since last spring, according to the latest data provided by City Hall.