NY.- When the real estate industry looks at the Flatiron Building, it sees an internationally famous 22-story skyscraper that has been mostly unoccupied for four years, declining in value during the pandemic-driven collapse of the commercial office market.
New York City officials see something else: a shelter for the continuing influx of migrants.
So, Jeff Gural, owner of the Flatiron Building, was asked what he thought of that.
Gural rejected the idea. “There are no bathrooms, there are no heaters. The building is destroyed.”
Facing a surge of migrants in the coming weeks, an overstretched shelter system and a closed housing market, New York City officials are beginning to prove the adage that desperation gives way to creativity is true.
In recent weeks, city officials have reached out to major property owners, business leaders and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in an effort to find spaces large enough to accommodate large numbers of migrants from the southern border.
This Friday, the Trump-era immigration policy called Title 42 is set to expire. The ostensible purpose of the policy was to protect public health but it was used to expel hundreds of thousands of migrants from the country, including those who had previously been granted asylum.
New York City is the only major city in the United States that has a law “granting the right to be in a shelter.”
As of Wednesday afternoon, 61,000 migrants have come to the city since last year, according to city officials.
More than 37,500 are currently in the care of the city in more than 120 emergency shelters and eight large-scale centers. Therefore, the city is preparing for many more.
On Sunday afternoon, Camille Joseph Varlack, Mayor Eric Adams’ chief of staff, instructed each city’s agency to identify “any property or space that may be available to house asylum seekers,” by a deadline. 5 p.m. Monday, according to an email obtained by The Times.
Those spaces must have an area of at least 10,000 square feet, not pose health hazards, and have running water.
