By Katie Vasquez
McCarren park is a long-time summer staple in both the Williamsburg and Greenpoint sections of Brooklyn, but this year, it looks a little different.
If you ask residents in the area, it’s probably because the park’s recreation center is now serving as a shelter for 55 migrant men.
Some park-goers like Logan Emerson are concerned.
“I was just curious how safe the conditions are for the asylum seekers,” Emerson said. “[I’m] less concerned about us locally and more concerned about their accommodations and making sure that they’re getting what they need from us as a community.”
For one park-goer who wished to stay anonymous, the city’s placement of the shelter in the neighborhood isn’t a good idea.
She believes officials should reconsider how they allocate money to the migrant crisis, given the expensive cost.
“They give them food and it goes in the trash because they’re accustomed to eating [it],” she said. “So, you’re wasting taxpayer dollars on all these people and they’re just being very ungrateful.”
It’s just one of the latest attempts by the city to help the ever-growing flow of migrants being bussed into the big apple.
Since spring of 2022, the mayor’s office estimates the city has received nearly 100,000 migrants, with more than half of them, 57,000, are in New York’s shelter system.
“I have stated for sometime we need help,” Mayor Adams said. “This is a national crisis and should be handled by national resources and policies.”
This wasn’t the first plea Adams has made. The mayor has been calling for help for months, and has stated that the migrant crisis would cost the city as much as $12 billion.
The mayor finally had a closed-door meeting on Thursday with a white house official, but it remains to be seen if that meeting will materialize into helping the city.
“I guess you just have to find the places that you can help these people out but I think also at the same time too the con of it is that there are also people already. Living in the city that need help and where is the help for those folks?”
The Biden Administration has claimed it has gotten tough on immigration, but according to homeland security at least 2.6 million migrants have crossed the border in the last two years.