Deputy Mayor Anne Williams-Isom, Health and Human Services: Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Anne Williams-Isom and I'm the deputy mayor for health and human services. As mentioned one week ago in my first briefing, we are again here to provide an update on the humanitarian crisis facing New York City.
Today we will take a deeper dive into the financial cost impacting the city to support this humanitarian crisis. As stated before, we have done and will do all we can to support asylum seekers, but we can't do this alone. From the start, let's be clear, we are in no way seeking to end the right to shelter. The city's actions yesterday were a request to get in front of the court to gain clarity from the court and preserve the right to shelter for the tens of thousands of people in our care, both previously unhoused New Yorkers and newly arrived asylum seekers. Given that the city is unable to provide care for an unlimited number of people and is already over extended, it is in the best interest of everyone, including those seeking to come to the United States, to be upfront that New York City cannot single-handedly provide care to everyone crossing our border.
The city now estimates to have more asylum seekers in care than New Yorkers experiencing homelessness when the administration first came into office. Let me say that again, that we now have more asylum seekers in our care than we did the homeless folks that were in our care when we came in at the administration, which is about 45,000 people. So before we take your questions, joining me today is City Hall's chief counsel, Brendan McGuire; Jacques Jiha, the director of the Mayor's Office of Management Budget; and Manny Castro, commissioner of the Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs. Before I turn it over to Jacques though, let me share the latest numbers with you.
We currently have more than 44,700 people currently, asylum seekers in our care, and over 70,000 people who have come through our intake center since the beginning of the crisis last spring. We have opened up more than 150 emergency shelters, including nine humanitarian relief centers. As you can see by the numbers, we continue to see a significant increase in the number of people coming to New York City on a daily basis. This has pushed us to open up additional emergency respite sites, and move into more counties upstate as part of our voluntary program. I want to now turn it over to Director Jiha to walk us through the financial pieces in more detail. Jacques?
Jacques Jiha, Director, Mayor’s Office of Management and Budget: Thank you very much, Deputy Mayor Williams-Isom. As you said, this is a very costly endeavor for the city to do by itself. As of April 30th, we spent a billion dollars on asylum seekers' needs. And as you can see on the chart, we are providing a range of services to those asylum seekers. Ranging from shelter, medical care, food, and social services. And as you can see also, we have eight agencies coordinating all these activities, including DSS, H+H, NYCEM, DCAS, HPD, DOHMH, and DDC. So it's a major, major, major effort on the part of the city, that consumes a lot of time and energy. Next chart. Now I'm going to show you the calculations, because right now, as we said, we spent a billion dollars. We believe that before July 1st, we will spend $1.4 billion. And by July of next year, we spend $2.9 billion, for a total of $4.3 billion.
Let me quickly walk you through the calculation that is a basis for the forecast. The math is straightforward. For fiscal '23, the average daily census is about 9,751 households. The estimated per diem is at $380 a day. And so the total cost is straightforward, as I said, is multiplying the number of households by the number of days in a year, which is 365 days, and multiply by the per diem of 380. That gives you $1.4 billion. In other words, once you forecast the number of households, it is straightforward. The same thing is happening for 2024. We expect 24,882 households. We have an estimated perm of $320 per day, that is a drop from the 380 that we use to compute the fiscal '23. And again, you multiply the number of households by the number of days in the year and by the per diem, and you come up with $2.9 billion.
Next slide. This slide gives you a sense of the challenges that we're dealing with. That forecast I just mentioned to you was based on the assumptions that we were getting about 40 households a day, okay? For the month of May, we looking at 188 households a day. Let me repeat again. That forecast was based on the assumption that we'll be getting 40 households a day. We are now at 188. So as you can see on the chart, there is a huge divergence between the actual which is the black line, and the forecast which is the red line. We don't know if that is going to persist, that system over time. We don't know if it's a blip, if it's going to go back to the trend line of that we are forecasting. But if that persists, it's going to be a very, very, very expensive proposition to basically cover the cost of caring for the migrants.
So we're going to have to update our forecast. As you already know, the city comptroller came out yesterday with the forecast. And they already think that our forecast is on the low end, and they already looking at $765 million above our forecast. We haven't made the decision to change our forecast yet. But because we're waiting to see if there is a new trend that will be established. But once we do, we will have to update our forecast going forward. So again, we are in the midst of a fiscal crisis. We have received very inadequate aid from both the state and the federal government, in particular the federal government. We have received so far awarded $38.5 million from the federal government. FEMA gave us an award of $8 million last December, and of the $800 million that was allocated to localities nationwide, we have received an initial award of $30.5 million.
So the $38.5 million barely covers five days of asylum seeker costs at our current spending rate. Regarding the state, the state is providing us a billion dollars, which is about 29 percent of the cost over a two year period of to a billion dollars. This aid will probably cover five months of asylum seekers over a two year period. Not over a year, over a two year period. But however, while the governor gave us a billion dollars, we also have cuts on our budget of about half a billion dollars a year. So whatever we gain on one on one hand, was taken from us on the other hand. So this is where we are, and because of the inadequate aid that we have received so far, we are looking at a billion dollar gap that was just open in the executive budget that would have to address at adoption. Again, so this is where we are. We believe we need more assistance from the federal government. And don't forget, we are assuming all this costs in an environment when we're looking at many forecasters predicting a slowdown of the economy, or if not a recession, at the end of this year. So you can imagine a combination of a big slowdown in the economy where you have a decline in your tax revenue base at the same time you're looking at the kind of increases we are looking at to spend for the kind of resources that we are looking to spend, if that trend were to continue in the future. Anne.
Deputy Mayor Williams-Isom: Okay. Thank you so much Director Jiha. We'll take questions in a moment, but before we do that, I'd like to turn it over to Immigrations Affairs Commissioner Castro to share some of the updates about ongoing efforts to provide immediate support for the influx of asylum seekers.
Commissioner Manuel Castro, Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs: Thank you so much, deputy mayor. First, I want to take this opportunity to thank the hundreds of city employees who are working incredibly hard, have been working incredibly hard in support of asylum seekers in New York City.
The logistics of caring for so many people is monumental, and I have seen it firsthand at our humanitarian centers, in our shelter system, at our schools, New Yorkers have stepped up and have contributed to this humanitarian crisis like no other city in the country.
And I also want to thank Deputy Mayor Anne Williams-Isom and Mayor Adams for leading us through this crisis with incredible humanity, with incredible compassion. We have said this over and over again, it is not the asylum seekers that we are seeing continue crisis, but it is the inaction by our federal government.
So today, as we seek additional support, we want to make clear that this is not about whether if we want to help people. We have and continue to help people. We have helped more people than anywhere else in the country. But as has been said before, we are at a breaking point. And without a real comprehensive strategy by the federal government, adequate support to our city, this is just not sustainable.
We don't want people to show up at our doorstep and end up in the street, whether it's longtime immigrants, of which we have millions, or newly arrived asylum seekers. This is the last thing we want to see happen. This is why we need a sensible conversation about what is possible and what is not moving forward.
So at this point, we do not have the physical infrastructure to continue to provide the same level of support to an indefinite number of people. I wish we could, but there are realities we must face. And that is why we are here seeking, again, support from the federal government and seeking for others to do more in response to the humanitarian crisis.
I also want to voice concerns coming from our longtime immigrant communities, of which I speak with often. Historically, immigrants have arrived to our city and found shelter with their friends, family members, acquaintances from their countries of origin.
Seeking shelter in our city system has been always a last resort. But what we are seeing now is significantly different, as you know, with the buses being sent here by Governor Abbott, flights from other localities and a lack of decompression strategy by the federal government.
Longtime immigrant communities, New Yorkers fear this is creating hostility against all immigrants as a whole. And a perception is developing that immigrants seek to depend on the government, which is simply not true. They want to continue to be here to work and contribute back to the city and their country that has provided an opportunity to them all.
So this is why we are hearing now from immigrant communities themselves that the current situation cannot continue indefinitely, and we need a comprehensive solution by the federal government, including comprehensive immigration reform. Thank you so much.
Deputy Mayor Williams-Isom: Thank you so much, Commissioner Castro. So in addition to supporting asylum seekers, we do have an unwavering responsibility to continue to provide funding for our schools, for public services for working families, for our older adults and essential services for the 8.8 million people who rely on daily us, but we need additional resources. As the mayor has said, this is a national problem and it requires a national solution.
No one city can or should be asked to play a disproportionate role, but that's what's happening absent additional support from federal leadership. We don't see an end in sight. And as we have said, we are at a breaking point. It's not fair that all those in our care, approximately 94,000 if you include the folks that are in our DHS system in all of our emergency centers, that's 94,000 people that are in our care right now will have to suffer because we have not yet seen a national decompression strategy.
No comments:
Post a Comment