NYC to shut down last migrant hotel after shelling out $170 million to crime-ridden shelter
New York City's last-standing — and most notorious — migrant hotel will soon stop housing illegal border crossers, The Post has learned.
The once-four-star Row NYC hotel on Eighth Avenue in Midtown was repurposed in October 2022, so its 1,331 rooms could be used as a shelter while the Big Apple dealt with the crippling migrant crisis, but Mayor Eric Adams confirmed the city's $5.13 million-a-month contract with the hotel won't be renewed in April.
5 New York City's last-standing and most notorious migrant hotel – the Row NYC — will soon stop housing illegal border crossers. The city's $5.13 million-a-month contract with Row NYC expires in April and will not being renewed.
Luiz C. Ribeiro for New York Post
The deal has allowed the hotel — which is owned by Boston-based real estate titan Rockpoint Group — to already rake in more than $170 million.
It's unclear what the future holds for the establishment, which once charged $414 to $435 per weeknight for standard rooms before becoming a shelter. Reps for the company did not return messages.
'We are proud to share that we will be closing another site — the Row Hotel, the last hotel in the city's emergency shelter system — marking yet another major milestone in our administration's recovery from this international humanitarian crisis,' Adams told The Post Friday.
5
Luiz C. Ribeiro for New York Post
The Row, which boasts on it's website that is 'more New York than New York,' was the first hotel to be enlisted by the city to take in migrants after Adams declared the city's existing homeless shelter system had reached a 'breaking point.'
Since then, it's been magnet for stabbings and other crimes, with rowdy Tren de Aragau-linked gangbangers among its tenants, including one 25-year-old Venezuelan migrant who allegedly broke into a Manhattan prosecutor's apartment, robbed her at gunpoint and pleasured himself in front of her.
Other thugs staying there also attacked cops on numerous occasions, including a July 2024 incident where one officer was bit and other had a moped hurled at them.
Workers there have also complained the hotel has become a wild 'free-for-all' of sex, drugs and violence after the city began housing migrants there,.
5
Dennis A. Clark
The Midtown South Precinct, that includes Row NYC and the Times Square area, has long had among the highest crime rates in the city. Although the precinct that seen a nearly 10% decline in crime this year compared to 2024, burglaries are up nearly 16% and felony assaults 2%, NYPD data as of Aug. 3 show.
The migrant crisis has cost city taxpayers more than $8 billion since spring 2022 to provide food, shelter and other services to over 238,000 migrants who flooded into the country because of former President Joe Biden's lax border policies.
At its peak, NYC used 220 hotels and other contracted sites to house the newcomers.
As of June 25, 2024, the city was operating 193 migrants shelters of which 153, or nearly 80%, were former hotels and other lodging establishments like The Roosevelt in Midtown that were being subsidized by taxpayer dollars, according to an internal list active shelters then reviewed by The Post.
5
Rob Jejenich / NY Post Design
Others included houses of worship, recreation centers, and controversial pop-up 'tent city' complexes, including one erected to house 3,000 migrants on Randall's Island; nearly 2,000 at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn; and another 1,000 outside Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens.
However, the city is now down to just four contracted shelters, with the Row NYC being last remaining lodging establishment.
The Department of Homeless Services has slowly absorbed remaining migrants into the city-run shelter system, which as of last week was caring for 92,000 residents, including 35,400 migrants.
'Three years ago, thousands of migrants and asylum seekers began streaming into our city every week — and the Adams administration stepped up,' the mayor said Friday.
5
Dennis A. Clark
'We opened hundreds of emergency migrant shelters to ensure no family slept on the street. Since then, we have successfully helped more than 200,000 migrants leave our shelter system and take the next step toward self-sufficiency, the migrant population in our care continues to decline, and we have closed 64 emergency migrant sites, including all of our tent-based facilities.'
'We have skillfully and humanely managed a national humanitarian crisis — and have done what no other city could do,' he added.
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