By Monica Showalter
How does this sound for an inviting proposition?
According to the New York Post:
Mayor Eric Adams now wants to start paying every day New Yorkers to shelter migrants in their own homes – as the Big Apple struggles to find beds for the thousands of asylum seekers still flooding into the city.
In his latest attempt to battle the ongoing migrant crisis, Adams on Monday floated a half baked “private residence” plan, which could possibly see local homeowners getting compensation to put up asylum seekers.
Hizzoner put forward the proposal as he revealed religious leaders had agreed to start housing adult male migrants overnight at 50 places of worship scattered across the five boroughs next month.
“There are residents who are suffering right now because of economic challenges. They have spare rooms. They have locales,” the mayor said, arguing his private residence proposal could put money back in the pockets of taxpayers.
He sounds like he thinks this was a one-off natural disaster. Actually, this is an extended problem which he’s failed to solve because he refuses to solve it.
Instead of demanding that Joe Biden enforce the border, end catch-and-release, and put a stop to abuse of U.S. asylum laws, he’s happy to be left holding the bag for Joe Biden’s open borders; forced to house and feed the invaders with no perceivable benefit to his city.
Already he’s spent $4.3 billion on them — and all he’s got is more migrants.
Instead of demanding that New York’s city council drop its absurdly generous “right to shelter” law, he’s now asking New York’s taxpayers to take care of the problem in their homes, as if resolving the housing problem this way wouldn’t encourage more illegal migrants to come to New York City, which it will.
He’s tried many workarounds around this problem of tens of thousands of migrants flooding his city with their hands out — from shipping the migrants to other cities in New York state, to calling for more federal funding to compensate the city for its self-imposed “right to shelter” free housing for illegally present foreigners; to housing the migrants in five-star hotels (which has battered the tax base); to moving the migrants to warehouse dockyard housing; to moving the migrants into public school space for housing — and not once does he imagine that maybe this willingness to be the patsy for Irresponsible Joe and the clowns on the New York city council is the actual root of the problem.
Nor does he propose to ask the migrants to pay for their own housing, which is what everyone else does who travels to a foreign country. The migrants currently in New York have already demonstrated that they have plenty of money in the products they purchase, while studies have shown that the people who migrate for economic reasons are typically members of their countries’ lower middle class, rather than the poorest people.
Now he’s proposing to drop the problem onto the laps of New Yorkers themselves, on the grounds that many have spare bedrooms in their homes to house strangers.
And stranger is right. By their very nature, illegal immigrants are unvetted foreigners. We’ve already seen that some are flash mob criminals, raiding Macys on one of their excursions.
We’e also seen how they treat New York’s five-star hotel rooms, trashing them like rock stars, apparently valuing the rooms for about as much as they paid for them.
Sure, some of the migrants may be ethical and industrious immigrants whose asylum claims are valid. But it’s obvious that many are not. They are products of the slums of places such as Caracas and San Pedro Sula, with full underclass values.
Which would probably present quite a risky deal for New Yorkers who might take Adams up on his offer to house the migrants for the city.
Will they be on their own if their homes get robbed by the migrants? Will the city pay for property damage brought on by migrants bringing propane stoves in the bedrooms and other fire-hazard activity that’s already been seen in the five-star hotel rooms? What happens if the migrants turn the homes into a trash heap and refuse to clean up after themselves? What happens if the stipend paid by the city is not enough to cover the damage?
Given the entitlement mentality seen in some of the migrants such as the Venezuelans who recently demanded free permanent housing in New York, it could get even riskier than monetary damage. What happens when the migrants refuse to leave the private homes, and insist on staying permanently? What happens if the migrants demand squatting rights on the private homes, knowing that the laws and the prosecutors will protect them?
Just the example of parents of public school students protesting Adams’ use of public school gymnasiums to house migrants pretty well tells us what the public response is likely to be to this proposal by Adams.
Many observers, on Twitter and even at the New York Post, have asked Adams if he’s got some spare bedrooms at Gracie Mansion to start.
In other words, You First.
That won’t happen, and this plan to house the migrants in private homes probably won’t be met with open arms either.
What Adams needs to do is take a good look at the problem, which isn’t housing, it’s federal and local policy. New York City evolved the way it did because of market forces, buttress by rule of law. Migrants and their government enablers know no law, nor do they pay attention to market forces. That leaves Adams with the problem. Maybe he should wake up.