Communal Apartments?
New York City mayor Eric Adams proposes compensating homeowners to house new migrants.
/ Eye on the News / Politics and law
Jun 08 2023
“The proletarian state has to forcibly move a very poor family into a rich man’s flat,” wrote Vladimir Lenin in October 1917, just days before his Bolshevik Party violently seized the reins of Russia’s government. Lenin’s musing set the tone for Soviet housing policy for the next 40 years. During that time, the urban population was largely compelled to reside in “communal apartments,” subdivisions of prerevolutionary housing stock that the Soviet government had expropriated from its rightful owners.
New York City mayor Eric Adams seems to be advocating a similar arrangement following a sharp uptick in the number of illegal immigrants seeking asylum in his distressed city after the expiration of Title 42, a pandemic-era policy that allowed U.S. authorities swiftly to turn back migrants at the border. After months of pleading that the 45,900 migrants currently housed by New York municipal authorities were straining city resources and finances to the breaking point, Adams floated the idea that compensating private homeowners who house migrants might be the answer. “They have spare rooms. They have locales,” Adams suggested of Gotham homeowners, declaring “we should take this crisis and go to opportunities” that involve “private residences.”
Adams has refrained from criticizing the Biden administration for losing control of the southern border, but he had a number of ideas on how to handle New York’s predicament. Last October, he declared a “state of emergency” and asked the federal government for $1 billion to meet the costs of arriving migrants. (Last month, New York governor Kathy Hochul also declared a state of emergency and requested federal funds.) More recently, Adams has housed migrants in elementary school gymnasiums (while classes were in session), made a deal with religious leaders to lodge male migrants at 50 places of worship around the city, bussed migrants at city expense to upstate New York and Canada, and called on small towns and cities across the country to help ease New York’s migrant burden. In his latest fiasco, Adams spent millions of dollars in public funds to rent upscale hotel rooms for migrants, only to be scandalized by the behavior of some, who have allegedly trashed their pricey accommodations.
https://www.city-journal.org/article/communal-apartments-for-nyc-migrants
