Immigrant rights activists and conservatives alike are criticizing the decision by Mayor Eric Adam’s administration to extend its lease of Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, where the city houses nearly 2,000 migrants in sprawling tent shelters.
NY SANE, a coalition of religious institutions, labor groups and housing organizations, called on the city administration to reverse course on the Sept. 13 lease extension and “find alternative safe accommodations for families with children.”
Christine Quinn — the former City Council speaker and president and CEO of the housing group Win, one of the member groups of the coalition — said the site “destabilizes families” by keeping children far from schools and putting migrants within flood zones.
“It is not a hotel,” Quinn, an influential city Democrat, said in an interview. “It is not a regulation shelter. It is an unsafe, dangerous, isolated location that’s not appropriate for migrants or anybody else to be living.”
And from the opposite end of the political spectrum, Kings County Conservative Party chair Fran Vella-Marrone said: “This is not a place for people to be housed.”
And she added: “I’m very disappointed that the lease has been renewed.”
The lease agreement allows for the city to house up to 2,000 people at the site, which is managed by the National Parks Service. The housing of migrants at the field has brought widespread condemnation from Republicans, including from Rep. Nicole Malliotakis of New York.
Malliotakis cosigned a Sept. 12 letter to President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris that said “the Biden-Harris White House was instrumental in the transformation of [Floyd Bennett Field] into a migrant camp.”
Liz Garcia, a spokesperson for Mayor Eric Adams, said the Adams administration was “grateful for the support we have gotten from our federal partners” on the lease extension. She said 1,830 migrants are currently housed at the site, among the 61,700 migrants now in the city’s care.
“With over 210 emergency sites currently operating and hundreds of new arrivals continuing to arrive in New York City every week, we have been out of good options for a while now,” Garcia said in an email. “The site at Floyd Bennett Field has been one tool in our very limited toolbox for sheltering hundreds of migrant families with children every night.”
Curtis Sliwa, the president of the Guardian Angels who has led multiple rallies against migrant shelters around the city, said in an interview that residents of the area near Floyd Bennett Field had been “stonewalled” in their attempts to learn more about the situation. And he argued that it was misguided to house migrants “in a flood zone” and “in the middle of nowhere.”
“Why are so many congregated all in one spot in a situation that everyone recognizes is inhumane?” Sliwa asked.