City not likely to use Aqueduct to house migrants
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A migrant shelter at Aqueduct Racetrack is unlikely, city officials say. Wikimedia Commons photo by Tdorante10
By Ryan Schwach
Although the new migrant shelter at the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center is nearly at capacity and the city continues to struggle to find locations to house the more than 50,000 migrants in its care, at least one potential shelter site in Queens appears to be unavailable.
The potential Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Center site at Aqueduct Racetrack at Resorts World Casino, which was floated by city officials as a possibility along with the Creedmoor site in mid-July, no longer seems like a viable option for shelter, city officials confirmed to the Eagle this week.
A City Hall spokesperson told the Eagle on Wednesday said that the city declined to use Aqueduct to house migrants because the state would have only permitted its use through Sept. 7, the start of horse racing season. Also, additional space requested by the city at the Aqueduct parking lot needed to erect a sufficient tent was denied by the state.
Though it appears to be extremely unlikely that a tent shelter is built at the racetrack, the City Hall spokesperson told the Eagle that the site, like all sites in the city, remain on the table.
A potential shelter at Aqueduct was announced in July by the city, and very quickly received sharp criticism and condemnation from local electeds as well as local civic groups. Similar responses were seen to both the Creedmoor site and the Floyd Bennett Field proposal, which remains ongoing.
Shortly after the city first announced that the site was under consideration last month, Councilmember Joann Ariola was one of several elected officials to attend a rally in protest of the move. Just before the protest started, Ariola announced that she had been told the site was “off the table.”
Though City Hall initially denied Ariola’s portrayal of the site’s viability, it now seems unlikely that Aqueduct will serve as a shelter site any time soon.
“Although the Mayor’s Office needs locations because 100k illegal migrants have now entered our homeless system, at least they are using common sense when they know that locations aren’t meeting specifications,” said Ariola in a statement Thursday.
Ariola went on to criticize Governor Kathy Hochul, who is moving forward with a plan to house migrants at Floyd Bennett Field, which neighbors the councilmember’s district.
“The governor…doesn’t have a plan and chooses locations like our historic National Parks that are dangerous for both the migrants and the surrounding community members,” she said.
Assemblymember Jenifer Rajkumar, whose district borders Aqueduct, said that she appreciated “the responsiveness of Mayor Adams’ administration to our community” and their opposition to the use of Aqueduct for a shelter. Rajkumar, a close ally of the mayor, has become one of, if not the most vocal member of the state legislature in calling for federal and state assistance for the crisis, echoing many of the calls previously made by Mayor Eric Adams.
“The city has done everything in its power to address the migrant crisis, and now we need President Biden to step in,” Rajkumar said in a statement to the Eagle on Thursday. “As I have called for with fellow elected officials from across the city, we need the president to declare a State of Emergency in order to open up more resources from FEMA, expedite work authorization for asylum seekers, create a decompression strategy at the border that fairly distributes migrants across the country, and provide additional funding and logistical support. Only through this broader solution at the federal level can we truly solve this crisis.”
State Senator Joe Addabbo, who previously represented the area before new district lines were drawn and who serves as the chair of the senate’s Gaming, Racing and Wagering Committee, was also opposedd to the shelter. Speaking with the Eagle this week, Addabbo said that he worried a shelter at the site could interfere with Resort World’s bid for one of the state’s downstate casino licenses.
“That area over the next three years is going to be a very different area,” he said.
Addabbo said that he believes the local pushback against the site was not a not-in-my-backyard mentality, and more based on the concerns with the size of the site and the conditions for the migrants.
“I don't like warehousing individuals, and we say it's temporary, but we know temporary is a very ambiguous, very vague term,” he said. “Even something that’s temporary, I don't believe these warehousing of 2,000, 1,000 people, they get the services that they need or really deserve.”
“I'm always for smaller venues,” he added. “I think they acclimate better into a community.”
