$90M migrant ‘hospital’ bill
The Big Apple’s public hospital system plans to spend more than $90 million to house migrants in four Midtown Manhattan hotels through the spring in response to President Biden’s border crisis, The Post has learned.
NYC Health + Hospitals CEO Mitchell Katz has approved $40 million in payments to the fourstar Row NYC near Times Square and $28 million to the four-star Stewart Hotel across from Madison Square Garden, according to documents first reported by The City.
Last month, The Post revealed workers at the Row were throwing out nearly a ton of food daily because the migrants living there wouldn’t eat it.
Another $20 million is going to the Watson Hotel on West 57th Street, where a group of migrants recently staged a protest against being relocated to Brooklyn, and $5.8 million to the historic Wolcott Hotel on West 31st Street.
The planned $93.8 million in spending by H+H — which bypasses normal oversight procedures for city government contracts — follows an Oct. 13 agreement for the hospital system to manage and operate what Mayor Adams calls migrant “Humanitarian Response and Relief Centers,” or HERRCs.
Last week, the seventh HERRC opened in the Wingate by Wyndham Hotel in Long Island City. The two other HERRCs are located in the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal in Red Hook and the world’s tallest Holiday Inn in Manhattan’s Financial District.
The first HERRC, a tent city built at Orchard Beach in The Bronx, never opened due to flooding worries and was replaced by another, short-lived tent city on Randall’s Island.
Huron Consulting Services, which was involved in H+H’s COVID-19 testing operation, is being paid $18.5 million to help open the HERRCs.
Another company, Rapid Reliable Testing, has an $11.5 million contract to triage arriving migrants.