Feds say that they will allow the city to use Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn as a shelter, but the state must pay for it. Melissa Russo reports.
The federal government has finally agreed to turn over a Brooklyn airfield to be used as a migrant shelter, bolstering the city's bed count by a couple thousand, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Monday.
The governor of New York received the news, and immediately shared word with reporters, during an afternoon press conference.
"Good news: we are in receipt of the proposed lease for Floyd Bennett Field," Hochul said.
The move to shelter migrants on the federal airfield comes after month of Hochul working her White House contacts. She never let on that the Biden administration had previously nixed the idea.
"This is a big step because the answer one month ago was 'no,'" Hochul said.
The space and additional 2,500 beds will undoubtedly be needed. Eight hundred of the 1,000 Creedmoor facility in Queens are now full, and 200 people have already moved into tents on Randall's Island.
Get Tri-state area news delivered to your inbox. Sign up for NBC New York's News Headlines newsletter.
Hochul also announced the state will spend another $20 million to provide casework to migrants. She says the goal is top help asylum seekers in the large relief centers who might want to leave or go back home and file their asylum claims so they can get on a path to work.
The governor delivered the news the same day Mayor Eric Adams traveled to Israel and one week after the state's lawyers issued a critique of the city's management of the Adams administration's management of the migrant crisis: from leaving people to sleep on the street, to failing to spend $10 million the state handed over to the city last year to help with asylum claims.
"We'll be watching closely, I assure you, because we want the outcome which is process these individuals," the governor noted.
Hochul said she would not help to move migrants out of the city to other counties in the state until they're in the pipeline for work authorization. The Legal Aid Society, however, disagrees.
"The right to shelter comes from the state constitution, which applies statewide," Joshua Goldfein said.
The state, the city and the Legal Aid Society are all expected back in court later this week to discuss the crisis response.
