NYC renews lease on Floyd Bennett Field migrant shelter — and gets an earful from all sides

Immigrant rights activists and conservatives alike are criticizing the decision by Mayor Eric Adam’s administration to extend its lease of Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, where the city houses nearly 2,000 migrants in sprawling tent shelters.

NY SANE, a coalition of religious institutions, labor groups and housing organizations, called on the administration to reverse course on the Sept. 13 lease extension and “find alternative safe accommodations for families with children.”

Christine Quinn — a former City Council speaker who now serves as president and CEO of shelter provider Win, one of the coalition’s members — said the site “destabilizes families” by keeping children far from schools and putting migrants within flood zones.

“It is not a hotel,” said Quinn, an influential city Democrat, in an interview. “It is not a regulation shelter. It is an unsafe, dangerous, isolated location that’s not appropriate for migrants or anybody else to be living.”

From the opposite end of the political spectrum, Kings County Conservative Party chair Fran Vella-Marrone said, “This is not a place for people to be housed.”

“I’m very disappointed that the lease has been renewed,” she added.

The lease agreement allows the city to house up to 2,000 people at the site, which is managed by the National Park Service. The sheltering of migrants at the field has brought widespread condemnation from Republicans, including from Rep. Nicole Malliotakis of New York, who represents Staten Island and parts of South Brooklyn.

Malliotakis cosigned a Sept. 12 letter to President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris that said “the Biden-Harris White House was instrumental in the transformation of [Floyd Bennett Field] into a migrant camp.”

Liz Garcia, a spokesperson for Mayor Adams, said his administration was “grateful for the support we have gotten from our federal partners” on the lease extension. She said 1,830 migrants are currently housed at the site, out of nearly 62,000 migrants in the city’s care.

“With over 210 emergency sites currently operating and hundreds of new arrivals continuing to arrive in New York City every week, we have been out of good options for a while now,” Garcia said in an emailed statement. “The site at Floyd Bennett Field has been one tool in our very limited toolbox for sheltering hundreds of migrant families with children every night.”

Curtis Sliwa, the founder and head of the Guardian Angels who has led multiple rallies against migrant shelters around the city, said in an interview that residents of the area near Floyd Bennett Field had been “stonewalled” in their attempts to learn more about the situation. He also argued that it was misguided to house migrants “in a flood zone” and “in the middle of nowhere.”

“Why are so many congregated all in one spot in a situation that everyone recognizes is inhumane?” Sliwa said.