- Officials made the shocking discovery Monday during a building inspection after a 311 call sparked an investigation in Richmond Hills
A Queens business owner housed 87 migrants in a basement, charging them a monthly fee for lodging and food, earning $313,000, police said.
Officials made the shocking discovery Monday during a building inspection after a 311 call sparked an investigation in Richmond Hills, law enforcement sources told PIX11.
The caller had complained about e-bikes filling the building’s backyard, Mayor Eric Adams said Tuesday.
The owner of the business in the building, Ebou Sarr, told PIX11 that he charged each migrant $300 to live there and receive three daily meals.
“The city says they don’t have room for these people… That’s not true,” Sarr said.
A Queens business owner housed 87 migrants in a basement, charging them a monthly fee for shelter and food, and making $313,000 in the process
According to the FDNY, approximately 40 beds were found on the main floor and basement
The owner of the business in the building, Ebou Sarr, said he charged each migrant $300 to live there and receive three daily meals.
According to the FDNY, approximately 40 beds were found on the main floor and basement.
The migrants were transported to a migrant shelter in the Bronx and an evacuation order was issued from the building due to safety concerns.
Fire officials said they eventually discovered that people were taking turns sleeping because of the limited number of beds.
Deputy Mayor for Housing Maria Torres-Springer said: “What we discovered last night is also in some ways symptomatic of a larger crisis that this city is facing and that we have talked about repeatedly in terms of the housing shortage in this city.
‘It’s not new that too many people are making desperate choices about where to live and what to pay for. The cause of this lies in the fact that we have not built enough homes.’
It comes as City Hall says migrant shelters are filled to capacity as more asylum seekers arrive. Adams has set a 30-day limit for singles and a 60-day limit for migrants staying in shelters, with many unable to find housing after their time is up.
The migrants were transported to a migrant shelter in the Bronx and a warrant was issued for the building due to security concerns
Fire officials said they eventually discovered that people were taking turns sleeping because of the limited number of beds
Meanwhile, Adams is accused of wasting millions of taxpayer dollars on migrants by handing out no-bid contracts.
City Comptroller Brad Lander made the claim in an audit of migrant-related contracts released Tuesday, which identified 340 contracts for asylum seekers representing an estimated contract value of $5.7 billion.
Most of these contracts were acquired on a contingency basis, allowing the city to waive the usual competitive bidding requirements, according to the audit.
In one case, a vendor charged the city $185.63 per hour for shelter supervisors, which equates to nearly $1,500 per eight-hour shift.
The audit finds that the city’s migrant crisis has been ongoing since spring 2022, with the declaration of Adams’s state of emergency in October of that year, and questions why contracts are still being procured on an emergency basis.
Last week, Adams announced that his government will cut another 10 percent from migrant spending and suspend drastic cuts to other departments after he was criticized for giving migrants taxpayer-funded debit cards.
The Big Apple has been flooded with an influx of migrants that has cost taxpayers $12.65 billion in 2023, a figure the mayor promises to reduce to $10.6 billion by the 2025 budget year.
More than 170,000 migrants have arrived in the city since spring 2022, and the crisis is only worsening as they continue to travel on buses from Texas, where record numbers are arriving.