Staten Island migrant shelter suffering a sewage crisis that stinks up the neighborhood as residents complain the building was never suitable to house people – ‘It’s disgusting and nobody should be subject to that’

The migrant crisis is worsening in New York City as a Staten Island shelter continues to cause hygiene problems in the area.

The school has become a controversial shelter, with St. John Villa Academy currently housing nearly 300 migrants, something it was never built for.

The 67-year-old building currently serves as a full-time home and bathroom for the area’s migrants. Due to the building’s age and purpose, it was never intended for 24/7 use, and the ejector pumps are unable to transport large volumes of raw sewage into the city’s sewers.

To address this problem, a septic treatment company visits the site several times a day to pump the raw sewage into a concrete pit, which usually takes 15 minutes, and then drains it away. During this time, the disgusting smell plagues the neighborhood.

Scott Herkert, who lives next door to the reception center, told DailyMail.com: ‘So the school is directly connected to my property and along the fence that connects to that they have their showers, sorry, angled showers.

“At least once a day they come in and pump this one out, and when they pump it out, it smells, it smells like you would expect it to smell. They’re pumping out a bathroom and getting out of here and stuff.”

He says the street is closed and will remain so until the problem is resolved.

Herkert further criticizes the government and says that they are lying and handling the situation terribly.

“You’re lying to the people, you’re lying to the people about the border crisis, you’re lying to the people in the cities and communities if we hadn’t exposed this,” he tells DailyMail.com

Herkert also claimed that while the area school and the church have asked people to show compassion for the migrant crisis, the church is reportedly building a three-meter fence around the school.

Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella had already said the building had been deemed habitable and “not viable” for a shelter by the city.

This comes three days after New York Mayor Eric Adams issued a warning that the city will be devastated by the current migrant crisis.

Adams is advocating for federal and state aid and asking a judge to suspend the Right to Shelter policy as the city struggles to find space for the 110,000 asylum seekers who have arrived since spring 2022.

In May, he made major changes to the 40-year-old Right to Shelter law that guarantees a bed for anyone in need in the city, as his administration asked for federal and state aid to deal with the wave of migrants arriving he has now. says it could destroy New York as we know it.

With Executive Order 402, Adams suspended aspects of the law, meaning the city no longer had to provide migrant families with their own room and could instead refer them to communal accommodation.

In July, he told migrants there was no more room in the city and that the city on the U.S.-Mexico border would hand out flyers telling newly arrived migrants to “consider another city.”

Herekert also invited Adams to witness the situation in the neighborhood and see that “they made a mistake here.”

Adams’ change in attitude comes as a surprise to many, as he promised during his campaign that NYC would remain a haven under an Adams administration, saying in 2021, “We must protect our immigrants. Period of time.’

In August 2022, Adams went to the Port Authority to welcome a bus full of asylum seekers sent from Texas by Republican Governor Gregg Abbot, who argued that progressive cities should also bear the costs of the influx of asylum seekers crossing the southern border .

Adams told reporters at the time, “As mayor of New York, I have to provide services to families who are here, and that’s what we’re going to do – our responsibility as a city, and I’m proud that this is a Right to Shelter state , and we will continue to do so.’

But the buses kept pouring in and have now left New York in a state of despair and collapse.

Despite Adams’ warning, the city still has a legal obligation to provide shelter to those who request it, forcing the government to convert a variety of city landmarks into makeshift shelters and temporary housing as short-term solutions, including the St. John Villa Academy.

More than 110,000 asylum seekers have arrived in the city since spring 2022, with more than 10,000 currently arriving per month and around 1,000 per day.

There are now nearly 60,000 migrants in the city’s care, and about 21,000 new migrant children will attend school this year. When the school year started on September 7, some schools were forced to expel students because classrooms were overcrowded.

The migrant crisis has plagued Adams’ time as mayor since he took office in January 2022 and if it continues, it could cost the city more than $4 billion this fiscal year.

City officials have said they expect the number of asylum seekers to reach nearly 33,980 households this fiscal year. According to Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine, asylum seekers cost the city about $10 million every day.

Although officials have not revealed how many hotel rooms are designated for migrants, hotel industry experts believe it is as many as 10,000.

The Roosevelt Hotel, Paul Hotel and Paramount Hotel are among the hotels designated for migrant housing in Manhattan. Long lines of migrants, mainly men from Africa, are now often seen outside the legendary sites.

Women and children are given priority and they say they are mainly fed pasta and salad, without many suitable options for young children, as reported by CBS news.

New York officials have been sounding the alarm for months about their inability to right the ship, with Adams warning that his office estimates the issue will cost the city about $12 billion in just three years.

He declared a state of emergency in the fall and repeatedly labeled the flood a “humanitarian crisis.” The mayor’s failed requests for more federal funding led him in April to condemn President Biden for “abandoning” the city.

The crisis is also far from limited to New York, as many major metropolises are also struggling to house asylum seekers. In Chicago, residents were stunned to discover in May that a police station had been converted into a shelter.

Problems at the southern border escalated significantly when Title 42, a pandemic-era border policy that gave officials advanced powers to detain people, ended in May.

On the day the policy expired on May 12, the number of illegal border crossings topped 10,000 – a figure that was maintained for several days