New York City finds a way to add 1,100 new affordable apartments almost instantly

Photo above - at the peak of the crisis, NYC converted 14 hotels to temporarily house homeless and jobless migrants.

Okay, let’s admit right at the start that 1,100 apartments is NOT going to solve New York City’s homeless problem. There are somewhere between 100,000 and 300,000 people sleeping in shelters, under bridges, in tents, and squatting in condemned buildings. (see link below). Gotham’s government seems to have as much trouble with statistics as the Trump administration.

Wait, it gets weirder. The 1,100 new affordable apartments were FORMERLY used to house undocumented migrants. These were hotels which had fallen on hard times, and the owners saw a way to make a quick buck by packing migrants into rooms. In some cases the owners were gouging the city as much as $500 a day per room. So it’s natural that New York’s mayor and city council are phasing out the most expensive of these migrant hotels. Developers are being allowed to fast track them into real apartments. This will take half the time and half the cost of building something new from the ground up. Just add kitchens, I guess.

Where did the evicted migrants go? That part is vague. (See link below). The only thing we can be sure of is that they're probably not rocking enough income to actually rent those converted units. But some lucky New Yorkers will hit the lottery. As soon as demo and rehab is completed. And if mayoral candidate Mamdani doesn’t find a way to reverse the process, and put homeless migrants back in those $500 a day rooms. You can’t rule it out.

The city spent $5 billion (with a “B”) on migrants during 2024. Food, housing, medical care, bus passes, clothing. It will probably be less in 2025. Fewer migrants are arriving in America, but those being deported seem to be nannies, dishwashers, and lawn crews. Not the drug dealers and human traffickers we were led to believe. No wonder the moneyed elites are pi$$ed – their nannies are gone, but the fentanyl dealers on the corner are still in business. If Musk's acolyte “big balls” visits NYC and gets his ass kicked by some thugs like he did in DC Trump will probably send the National Guard up there too. But the elites probably won’t thank anyone.

How much does it cost to convert a room at the JFK Hilton to an actual apartment? Nobody is saying. The link is also mute on what the developers are paying for the recently trashed hotels like that airport Hilton. Hopefully not a lot. But this is New York, so you can never tell.

1,100 new apartments is a step in the right direction. But a drop in the bucket. Who knows, New York might decide that some vacant office buildings could be rehabbed and flipped into homes. The city has an astounding 74 million square feet of vacant office space. That’s the equivalent of 26 empire state buildings. Thats enough for 100,000 apartments at 750 square feet per unit.

I’m just sayin’ . . .

NYC Builders Are Converting Shuttered Migrant Hotels Into Apartments

how many homeless are in NYC - Search

NYC migrant crisis costs will crack eye-popping $5 billion on shelters, security and food

New York City has 26 Empire State Buildings worth of empty office space after pandemic | The Independent