‘The System Did Its Job’ Mayor Adams Says After City Finds Migrants Choosing to Stay in Basements Over the Shelter System

On Monday night, the FDNY arrived at a furniture store in Richmond Hill and found dozens of men, mostly migrants from Senegal, Mauritania, and Guinea, sleeping in bunk beds in the store's basement and on the ground floor. On Wednesday, City officials found a similar set-up at a juice bar in the Bronx. The owner of both businesses, Ebou Sarr, had been operating a sort of de facto migrant shelter system, one that according to some of the men staying there, was far preferable to the City's increasingly byzantine and chaotic migrant housing, which under the Adams administration has become a second-class system with strict time limits, inadequate facilities, and sparse meals that some have described as "dog food." At Sarr's stores, people who were able to pay gave him $300 a month for a bed and food.

"We shared everything, we were friends, we felt good there," Gueye Dèmba, a 41-year-old migrant from Senegal told the CITY, said of his time at the Queens furniture store. Dèmba had moved there after he hit his 30-day limit in the City shelter where he had been previously staying; he had visited the City's reticketing center in the East Village and decided he didn't want to wait days for another shelter placement. "It's eight days or ten days before they give you another shelter," he said. "You get exhausted, you can't sleep at night, so that’s why I left."

Sarr, himself an immigrant from Senegal, said his efforts were born out of necessity. "They were desperate. That's why we had to do something, do something, that’s better than what they’re doing," Sarr told the CITY. "I mean, they're human beings."

Both buildings were hit with vacate orders by the City, sending many of the men back to the City shelter system. 

No one should be crammed into a basement with dozens of other people—but it's a fairly damning indictment of the City's punitive posture toward migrants that many find it preferable to the City's offerings. 

On Tuesday, Mayor Adams described the men at Sarr's shelters as an anomaly. "We have been successful in our 30‑day program, intense care. And so when you move that large volume of people, are they going to be a small number that someone is going to do something inappropriate? Yes," he said. He added, "The system did its job."

And some links that are also succeeding at their jobs: 

• Via Politico: "Tim Pearson, an enigmatic but powerful figure within City Hall, delayed the opening of the migrant facility at Floyd Bennett Field, according to interviews with three people involved in or familiar with the process. Two of those people—along with two others familiar with the matter—said Pearson was working to ensure a security contract for Bo Dietl, a former NYPD detective who raised money for Adams' mayoral run…Pearson's attempt to steer a lucrative job opportunity toward Dietl, who runs a Manhattan-based security and private investigation firm, ultimately failed. Yet the effort underscores the administration's penchant for turning to longtime allies and campaign surrogates to perform important governmental tasks."
• "The Story Behind the New York Times October 7 Exposé"
• Donald Trump owes a lot of money but he might not have to sell off some of his real estate portfolio (yet).
• *whispers* But what about Local Law 97…
• Good luck with this crackdown on illegal e-bike battery sales, truly. 
• Car owners are still complaining about congestion pricing? No way.
• City & State has an explainer on the City Council's lawsuit against Mayor Adams over his refusal to implement the housing voucher expansion passed by the council. 
• "Inside a Brooklyn Sweatshop That Processes Tobacco for Bodegas"
• REBNY continues to be REBNY.
• A federal judge has lifted the contempt order against the Department of Correction.
• "After targeting Columbia, doxxing truck goes after anti-Israel high school teacher in Queens"