New York, NY—Today, New York Mayor Eric Adams announced his $109 billion preliminary budget for FY25.
Murad Awawdeh, Executive Director, New York Immigration Coalition:
“This morning, the Mayor gave a budget briefing that did not reflect the significant support New York State is committing to address asylum seeker costs – to the tune of $2.4 billion in additional funding. The Mayor's now-incomplete proposed budget for FY25 seems to be more of an attempt to improve his polling numbers rather than a considered plan to meaningfully improve the lives of new arrivals or longtime New Yorkers. According to the Mayor, this reversal of budget cuts from November was due to increased revenues, downward adjusted census projections for new arrivals, and anticipated cost-savings from things like renegotiating contracts with expensive no-bid shelter operators and moving some social service delivery to nonprofit groups—both of which were solutions proposed by organizations like ours for the past year. It’s nice to see the Mayor seize on good ideas and make them his own. But it would have been better if he had co-opted another good idea: expanding access to housing vouchers to New Yorkers regardless of immigration status, saving the City $3 billion while getting people out of shelters and on the road to stability and independence.
Choosing to release the FY25 Preliminary Budget without reflecting increased resources from the State to support migrant service was an attempt to avoid accountability for the crisis he has manufactured so he can continue to paint himself as a victim with no agency or resources to meet the needs of his constituency. His failure to take responsibility for the harm he is actively inflicting on immigrant families and children with his 30- and 60-day shelter restrictions, which risk increasing homelessness in the dead of winter, will only prolong a wholly unnecessary budget crisis at an unprecedented time. Immigrant New Yorkers deserve better and all working families deserve more than just the bare minimum from this administration. New Yorkers didn’t fall for his attempt to scapegoat immigrants for his fiscal management choices before, and we won’t be fooled now.”