The migrant madness isn’t just taking a toll on New York City’s budget — it’s socking its economy, too.
As we’ve been saying ever since this insanity began, President Biden deserves most of the blame for the city’s migrant woes, but if New York wants to save its struggling businesses, it’ll take serious steps to discourage newcomers from flooding in, starting by no longer offering shelter on demand to anyone who asks for it.
As The Post’s Lisa Fickenscher reports, retailers at the 1,025-room Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown have fled the area, now that the facility has been turned into a “welcome center” for migrants.
Nine of 16 retail spaces around the hotel’s ground floor completely vacant, with three spots appearing to house pop-ups with no signage.
At least two of the remaining stores have suffered steep drops in sales: Carmina, a luxury shoe boutique, reports a 28% sales plunge in June and 40% in July, vs. those months last year.
It’s prompted the store’s lawyer to demand a rent reduction.
A Turkish men’s clothing shop, Sayki, is stuck, having extended its lease just before the hotel reopened as a shelter.
“Even if we got free rent we might not have any customers left if this goes on for two more years,” fumes its vice president Tunch Hepguler.
The retail exodus at the Roosevelt follows troubling news back in August that prominent New York restaurateur Danny Meyer was shutting two eateries at the historic Redbury Hotel in Manhattan after it, too, became a migrant shelter.
Yet these are just the businesses that make headlines. How many more are also suffering through the migrant waves?
Remember, the invasion of newcomers clobbered Gotham just as it was trying to recover from the COVID lockdowns.
Tourism and other businesses are still struggling.
Yet visitors surely don’t flock to New York on vacation to see buses dropping off migrants.
Adams needs to up his pressure on Biden to secure the border.
He griped Tuesday about not being able to get a meeting with the White House even to discuss the situation.
“It baffles me,” he said. “The federal government said to New York City: ‘We’re not going to do our job . . . You take care of 4,000 people a week, Eric.”
Is Adams going to sit back and take that?
He’s been vowing severe budget cuts, taxes, layoffs to close a $7 billion hole next year fueled, in large part, by migrant costs. He figures the tab for three years will run to $12 billion.
And Hizzoner’s surely right — this is a national issue.
But, hello? The “federal government” is run by Joe Biden; instead of complaining, Adams needs to point the finger directly at the prez, by name, not just to demand money but to secure the border so no town in America is overwhelmed.
Yet while the feds fiddle, it’s essential that the mayor make New York less of lure to migrants.
Step 1: Stop offering shelter on demand to migrants.
No explicit law or court ruling requires it. Rather, the supposed “right to shelter” originated in an agreement by the city 40 years ago.
It’s all well and good to claim New York is a “sanctuary city,” but as Gotham goes broke, you’ve got to start reconsidering what’s sustainable. The status quo is not.