No matter what the disaster, from a terror attack to a pandemic, leadership rules are clear: Act decisively and consistently, communicate those actions, as well as all relevant data, and be accountable.
On the migrant crisis — no matter what you think the city should do about migrants — Mayor Eric Adams isn’t yet meeting this leadership test.
Adams slammed the City Council last week for failing to support his migrant actions, with members instead peppering him with questions and doubts.
No wonder they’re skeptical.
First, decisive, consistent action. To take one point of inconsistency: Adams spent much of the past two weeks setting up “emergency” shelters in school gyms, then abruptly dismantling them.
Adams changed his mind about gyms in a hurry after parents — many of them immigrants themselves — said it was outrageous to have unvetted men sleeping on school grounds.
This outrage was hardly unpredictable, and Adams could have avoided it had he communicated with parents in the first place.
Instead, he spent money and resources on an abandoned idea — and lost community trust.
It’s not the first time Adams has quickly abandoned his own idea. Last fall, the city built a tent city for migrants on Randall’s Island, only to unbuild it.
The city did the same thing at Orchard Beach. In neither case did Adams offer a credible explanation — or any explanation — for the about-face.
Second, communication. Adams last week dismissed concerns the city is treating migrants differently from the existing homeless population.
Saying he wanted to “dispel myth from reality,” he declared, “There’s nothing asylum seekers are getting that any other person who was here beforehand can’t.”
Not true. New York is busing migrants — and only migrants — to the Roosevelt Hotel, a well-appointed Midtown property.
The Roosevelt is literally recast, in the city’s term, the “asylum seeker arrival center.”
If the city were treating everyone the same, it would direct everyone to its normal homeless-intake centers and would not inquire whether someone is an “asylee” or not.
(Is the city even inquiring if asylees have applied for asylum?)
Third, grasp of data. Adams wildly said last week that “almost half of all hotel rooms now are taken up by asylum seekers.”
This wasn’t a momentary lapse: The mayor expounded on this theme at length.
“New York City is the hotel capital,” he noted. “Almost 50% of those hotel rooms are taken up by migrant asylum seekers that we are paying for. So instead of monies coming from people who are visiting us and spending . . . we are using those hotels.”
Not true: Even the Times figured out this was “inaccurate.” The hotel union had to correct the mayor, saying that of the city’s 125,000 to 130,000 hotel rooms, migrants are in about 3,500 of them.
Which raises a question: The city signed a contract last year for 5,000 hotel rooms for a year. If it hasn’t needed all 5,000, why is it signing a three-year deal for another 1,025 rooms at the Roosevelt, a deal whose terms still aren’t public?
Just as — Lord help us — Mayor Bill de Blasio did during COVID, with information on cases, deaths and vaccines, Adams needs to inform New Yorkers with a dashboard of data: How many families and how many single adults are in migrant shelters?
How many are in asylum hotels, how many in congregate asylum shelters and how many in traditional homeless shelters? Which hotels, and how many rooms each?
When did each asylum seeker apply for asylum, and when is his or her court date? What’s the average length of stay?
Fourth, accountability. Adams keeps saying the federal government has “failed” the city by refusing to provide billions in aid.
But New York City has created its own problem by unquestioningly agreeing it shoulders the burden to provide all newcomers shelter, no questions asked.
Here, too, Adams has been inconsistent, musing that the right to shelter should be “reassessed” and then dropping the matter.
If New York can’t handle this burden — as apparently it can’t — it should stop trying.
Adams is the one who keeps insisting, by taking grand steps such as opening the Roosevelt Hotel to migrants, we can handle this burden — so it is Adams’ failure not to start handling it.
Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
