The city is currently spending more money on housing and services per migrant than it did last summer, despite projections from Mayor Adams showing the overall price tag for the crisis is dropping thanks to reductions in the number of asylum seekers in the city’s care.
Molly Wasow Park, Adams’ Social Services commissioner, revealed in a City Council hearing Monday that the city’s current average per night cost for caring for a single migrant household — known as the “per diem rate” — is $388. That price tag is inclusive of all expense categories related to migrant care, including shelter and food.
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In November, Adams ordered his administration to figure out a way to reduce overall projected migrant spending by 20% in the current 2024 fiscal year, using the projection from August that included the $383 per diem rate as the starting point for that savings target.
Last month, City Hall said the administration had been “successful” in formulating a plan to achieve the 20% cut, putting its new projected total price tag for the crisis at $10.6 billion through the end of the 2025 fiscal year, down from the previously forecasted $12.25 billion. The lowered projection prompted Adams to reverse some budget cuts he’d enacted months earlier to offset spending on the migrant crisis.
The mayor said last month that his administration was able to lower the projected spending because of a push to reduce the migrant shelter census.
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The other component that the mayor said last month would help bring down migrant costs was for the city to shift away from for-profit migrant shelter contractors in favor of relying on more cost-friendly nonprofit providers.
It’s unclear how much progress the administration has made on replacing for-profit contractors with nonprofit providers. NYC Health + Hospitals, which has helped oversee the migrant response, advanced multiple new for-profit migrant services contracts just this past December, including one for DocGo, a controversial medical firm that has come under scrutiny by state Attorney General Letitia James.
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The $388 per diem rate comprises costs associated with housing migrants in the city’s network of Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Centers, known as HERRCs, as well as in its traditional Department of Homeless Services shelters.
In the traditional DHS system, the per diem rate is far lower. For a single adult, it’s $145.13 and $232.40 for families with children, Wasow Park testified, indicating the elevated migrant per diem rate is being driven by HERRC spending. It’s unclear, however, what the per diem rate is at a HERRC facility.
Lutvak, Adams’ spokesman, wouldn’t say whether the newly disclosed elevated migrant per diem rate could impact the mayor’s savings directives. He also did not say what has caused the fluctuations in the rate.
According to the latest data from Adams’ office, the city has spent just over $4 billion on housing and services for the tens of thousands of migrants, mostly Latin Americans, who have arrived since spring 2022.
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The 60-day policy that the mayor credits as a cost-saving measure has so far only been impacting migrant families with kids staying in the city’s HERRCs. In Monday’s hearing, Wasow Park said there is a “potential possibility” that the Adams administration will seek to subject migrant families in the DHS system to 60-day limits, too, though she conceded that would likely need state approval.
