Mediaboss Marketing

A town in Rockland County is cracking down on property management companies and absentee owners looking to make money off the migrant crisis.

The town of Clarkstown is going after those who are illegally renting out houses, often to multiple families.

Officials in the town say profiteers are increasingly illegally converting single-family homes in neighborhoods and packing in renters. The conditions in some after often dangerous for the families, as well as first responders.

One tenant said there are five families living in a single-family home in New City, a home recently raided by Clarkstown inspectors. Pictures show beds in the attic, accessible only through a crawl space.

"Had there been a fire here, people would have died. There's only way in and out of that attic, it's up a flight of steps and then through an opening that you have to crawl through," Clarkstown Supervisor George Hoehmann said.

The News 4 I-Team was unable to reach the owner.

Clarkstown's supervisor said a number of absentee owners in the town are utilizing one property management company: First Choice. Hoehmann said the firm operates 37 properties in Clarkstown and 302 more throughout the rest of the county. At the moment, 17 of the properties are a concern.

"They've denied access at multiple locations, were non-responsive when violations have been issued. These are houses that were allegedly altered, systematically altered, in violation of our building codes," the supervisor said Thursday.

The town began investigating in September after inspectors found 34 migrants living in an illegally converted house in New City run by First Choice. A judge ordered the home vacated and restored to a single-family dwelling.

Clarkstown is now going to court to try and get access to the 17 homes First Choice oversees and make sure they are up to code. Officials and first responders are calling for more oversight of the property management companies and resources from the state to battle the illegal housing issue.

A state Supreme Court judge gave New York City and New York State at least one more week to settle their differences over the right to shelter in New York. Melissa Russo reports.

Go here to see the original:
Rockland County says landlords are packing migrant families into homes for profits - NBC New York

New York Citys homeless system is sheltering record numbers of people week after week, as an influx of migrants accelerates to its highest rate since the crisis began.

The city is moving more and more migrants out of its vast network of emergency shelters by combining pressure tactics with help in finding permanent housing. But the jump in arrivals to more than 500 people per day in recent weeks has outpaced those efforts.

So Mayor Eric Adams is now trying a tougher approach. He is taking aim at families with children the bulk of the migrant population flooding into the city with measures that may stretch the boundaries of New Yorks legal obligation to provide shelter.

On Monday, the mayor announced a 60-day limit on how long a family can stay at any one shelter. After that, the family must return to an intake center and reapply for shelter. A similar limit was imposed on single adults over the summer, and later reduced to 30 days.

Expanding this policy to all asylum-seekers in our care is the only way to help migrants take the next steps on their journeys, Mr. Adams said in a statement.

He also said that a new 500-family shelter being built at a defunct Brooklyn airport would not provide families with their own rooms. Instead, there will be an open floor plan with locked privacy dividers between living spaces.

Advocates for homeless people criticized the plan immediately. The Legal Aid Society and the Coalition for the Homeless said in a joint statement that forcing families to move every two months would disrupt access to education for the thousands of migrant children who are enrolled in the citys public schools (federal law lets homeless students stay in the same school if they move, but moving could mean longer commutes). And housing families in cramped and open cubicles at Floyd Bennett Field, the former airport, may violate state regulations governing family homeless shelters, the groups said.

The city comptroller, Brad Lander, who has often criticized the mayors handling of the migrant crisis, echoed the groups concerns.

Denying families with children the stability of a private room and curtailing their shelter stay is a shortsighted, cruel step, he said in a statement.

Mr. Adams has been searching desperately for ways to contain the cost of housing and feeding migrants, a figure he has estimated will reach $12 billion over three years. More than 130,000 people fleeing economic and political upheaval, mostly in Latin America, have come to the city since last year. Over 65,000 are now in shelters.

New York has been a magnet for migrants in part because it is the only major U.S. city that must provide a bed for every homeless person who asks for one the result of a decades-old court case.

During the three-week period ending Oct. 15, migrants moved out of shelters at a rate of nearly 350 per day, a review of city data shows. That would have made a dent in the population a few months ago. Not any longer. The number of migrants arriving with nowhere to live has risen since June, from about 300 a day to about 535 a day during the past three weeks the most the city has recorded.

On Oct. 4, the city asked a judge to suspend the so-called right to shelter for single adults. The next day, Mr. Adams left for a trip to Latin America to try to persuade hundreds of thousands of migrants headed north that conditions in New York City might not be as welcoming as they had heard.

When you see children making the long trek through a jungle and then having to live in conditions of congregate shelters, of not having the real environment that they deserve, he said in Mexico City, it just makes it extremely challenging.

Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, an associate policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a research organization, said the increase in migration to New York was most likely linked to increases in crossings at the southern border. CBS News reported that Border Patrol agents had apprehended 210,000 people last month between official ports of entry along the Mexican border, up from 180,000 in August and more than double the 99,000 apprehended in June.

In early October, many migrants interviewed in Mexico, Ecuador and Colombia said the mayors warnings about life in New York would not dissuade them from coming, although some said they were headed elsewhere after friends told them jobs and housing were scarce in the city.

At a hotel shelter in Queens where she has lived since May, Viviana Verde said on Monday that if she were transferred to a shelter with less privacy, she would find a way to leave the system instead.

I just cant imagine going to a place with many more families, said Ms. Verde, 36, who migrated from Venezuela with her husband and gave birth to a daughter last month.

But Ms. Verde said she did not know how she and her husband would be able to afford rent. They are eligible to get working papers but need $1,500 for a lawyer to process the documents, she said. Her husband has been working a little fixing motorcycles outside the shelter, she said, but almost all the money we earn, we spend on food and things for the baby.

Speaking on Tuesday outside the Row NYC hotel, a large family shelter in Midtown Manhattan, Javier Tovar, 28, was dismayed to hear about the 60-day rule.

We want to get out of here, but we need time, said Mr. Tovar, who did construction work in Venezuela and came to the United States with his wife and three children a month ago.

If they give us 60 days in the shelter, well, it will be Gods will, but there is a lot of confusion and worry, he added. We are already afraid that they will deport us since we only recently entered the country.

Read more:
As More Migrants Arrive in New York, Adams Toughens Approach to Shelters - The New York Times

CHICAGO Mayor Brandon Johnson will not join a group of alderpeople and city officials traveling to the southern U.S. border this week, reversing an earlier decision to lead the delegation himself.

Johnson told reporters earlier this month he would be heading to the border soon with the goal of streamlining coordination between officials in Texas and Chicago, which has seen hundreds of buses full of asylum seekers arrive here unannounced since May.

But in a news release Monday, Johnson said he would not attend the trip. Instead, the delegation leaving Tuesday will be headed by Beatriz Ponce de Leon, deputy mayor of Immigrant, Migrant and Refugee Rights. The citys Chief of Faith Engagement and at least two alderpeople also will join the trip.

The purpose of this trip is to review operations at federal processing centers, and municipal and NGO-led transit sites, and begin discussions with local stakeholders about ways to alleviate the financial and operations challenges in both Chicago and at the border, the Mayors Office said in a statement. A point of emphasis will be establishing better lines of communication and collecting migrant data to expedite work authorization processing and the transition to self-sufficiency.

The border visit comes as the city struggles to house thousands of asylum seekers who have come to Chicago since August 2022, the majority of them bused here by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and other border-state politicians.

The city is currently operating 25 temporary shelters to house migrants. Meanwhile, more than 3,300 people remain sleeping on the floors of police stations as of Monday morning as they await shelter placement, according to a city spokesperson. About 550 asylum seekers are currently staying at a staging area at OHare.

The majority of the arrivals are from Venezuela, which has struggled with political upheaval and an economic crisis resulting in severe food and medicine shortages, surging inflation, rising unemployment and violent crime.

The number of buses carrying migrants to Chicago exploded over the spring and summer, with 318 of 428 total buses arriving since May 12, according to daily numbers provided by the spokesperson.

The citys border delegation this week follows a similar trip taken earlier this month by New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who visited Mexico, Ecuador and Colombia to discourage migrants from coming to the countrys largest city.

But unlike Adams, Johnson will remain in Chicago for now, at least. The mayors senior advisor Jason Lee said Johnson still plans to visit the border at some point, but didnt share a timeline for when that would be.

We want to make sure that we get an advance mission down there to really have some substantive conversations, really do some fact finding to get a better better sense of exactly what the baseline information is, and whats possible, so that by the time the mayor gets down there, hes really negotiating concrete deliverables, Lee said. So based on the feedback we got from the border, we thought this would probably be the better way to do it if we really wanted to maximize his time.

The city delegation will visit El Paso, San Antonio, McAllen and Brownsville in Texas, which Mondays news release said compromise the primary points of departure for migrants traveling on to Chicago.

A major goal of the trip is to provide information to officials working with migrants in Texas about what new arrivals can expect to find in Chicago, especially as the weather gets colder, Lee said.

Its to give an accurate presentation of what to expect if you do get to Chicago, Lee said. The people were visiting are the people who manage those systems. Theyre the people who manage the transit centers, theyre the NGOs and municipal leaders who manage transit systems, that are at the point where people are on buses. They have the opportunity to counsel, advise and give information to individuals as they arise.

Alds. William Hall (6th) and Byron Sigcho-Lopez (25th) confirmed Monday they were attending the trip.

Sigcho-Lopez said he believed it was important for city officials to see up close whats happening at the border to connect the dots to the ongoing crisis in Chicago.

We need to coordinate efforts to see how were going to address this crisis, the Pilsen alderperson said. The crisis is not stopping because someone says, Dont come anymore. The crisis stops when we ask from the federal government and the state government to have comprehensive reform and real policies to prevent people from coming to the country, but also once theyre here in the country, that were responsible for the crisis that we have created.

Ald. Andre Vasquez (40th), chair of the Councils Committee on Immigration and Refugee Rights, said he was invited on the trip but declined to go due to City Council budget hearings this week.

Johnsons administration also hopes the trip will lead to the city getting more information about specific new arrivals coming to Chicago such as their country of origin, their work authorization status and other details that could help the city resettle them more quickly, Lee said.

Whats happening now is we get no information. Theres such a deluge of people incoming, its very difficult to ascertain who they are. Theyre moving at different shelters. And by the time youre able to triage in the back end, it may be two or three months down the road, and thats costing the city significantly, Lee said. More information on the front end will help us actually get these people to self sufficiency much quicker.

Subscribe to Block Club Chicago,an independent, 501(c)(3), journalist-run newsroom. Every dime we make fundsreportingfrom Chicagos neighborhoods. Already subscribe? Clickhereto support Block Clubwith atax-deductible donation.

Listen to Its All Good: A Block Club Chicago Podcast:

Continued here:
Mayor Not Heading To US Border To Assess Migrant Crisis, As City ... - Block Club Chicago

Oscar B. Castillo and Wil Sandss ongoing project BordersCruzadas: A Collaborative Story, on view at the new Community Engagement Hub on Columbia College Chicagos 600 S. Michigan campus, forces viewers to confront ingrained assumptions about American exceptionalism. Part photography, part archival material, BordersCruzadas features Castillo and Sandss documentarian work completed over the past year as they accompanied people fleeing Venezuela and other South American countries to the U.S.-Mexico border.

BordersCruzadas first opened in April 2023 at ART WORKS Projects (where I serve as a board member) as part of EXPO Chicago, when Chicago had received more than 8,000 asylum seekers, the majority from Texas. As of early October, Chicago has welcomed 18,000 total migrants since 2022, with upwards of 1,000 new arrivals a day projected, according to Governor J.B. Pritzker. Chicago has struggled to house everyone, though this lift has been supported robustly by mutual aid volunteers. One group, the Police Station Response Team, spent over $3.4 million of their own money on food, water, and supplies for migrants.

Sands and Castillo themselves initially bonded over a commitment to mutual aid when they met in 2002 squatting in Barcelonas unused buildings, which had been transformed into self-governing communes. It allowed for an incredible amount of creativity [which] then led to some sort of vision of an alternative way of living, recalled Castillo, a native of Venezuela who was in Spain after finishing a psychology degree at Central University of Venezuela. Sands arrived in Barcelona after graduating from Hampshire College to study identity formation amidst the Catalonia national liberation movement and ended up staying nearly a decade in squats with Castillo around Europe.

We were in DIY, punk spaces. . . . We had all this lived experience in spaces on the margins of the social realm and political critique, Sands said. This concept of identity, home, movement, that sort of fluctuation was all part of me . . . part of our reality.

The images and objects included in BorderCruzadas reflect the inclusive spirit of the duos previous work with marginalized and politicized populationsincarcerated folks, indigenous land activistswho are often not centered in discussions of which they are the subject. Both photographers have led participatory photography workshops with communities worldwide and, in Chicago, organized a workshop with Centro Romero for recent immigrants to explore identity through self-portraiture and collage. We are trying not to [leave] anyone out of the conversation who has something that can activate you more in some tender, reflective way, explained Castillo. That part of yourself that says, Okay, this is a human being and not only numbers.

The difference is evident between traditional media coverage of migrants that prioritize illustrating the scale of the crisisof tents dotting public parks, groups huddled in police stationsand Castillo and Sandss tender portraits, intimate enough to see the lines on a face and emotions held in a brow. The majority of images focus on just two to three families or individuals, capturing their miles trodden forward (and often backward) across a continent, threading a web of connections as the duo separates and reunites with familiar faces along their journey.

In one photo, a man reaches for his son on top of a windswept La Bestia (what migrants call a freight train that shuttles riders sitting on top of or between cars), as it snakes through the vast landscape between Chiapas, Mexico and various points on the U.S. border. In the middle of a bushy, burnt orange desert, a young couple and their toddler look straight into the camera as they pose in front of a white bedsheet stretched across two poles for a makeshift background.

Its a question as old as documentary itself: How could any photographer with a conscience take pictures of human suffering without lending a hand?

Their commitment to communal care towards their subjects came before the photography, said Castillo. Sleeping on shared mattresses, lifting each other up as they cross train cars, breaking bread togetherall these things were a no-brainer for the two photographers. It says to participants, You are doing the journey with us, and even if youre not part of us, you are the closest you can be, said Sands. The two keep in touch with several of the people they met along the way, connecting them to resources wherever those folks land and contributing themselves when they can.

Castillo does not see documentary photography as a sanitized, catalog medium. He is not approaching photography as merchandise, not approaching the histories as told to me as a currency that changes hands without the social implications and the commitment of people.

Though photography is a flexible and useful tool, it can be as limited as any medium, said Castillo, explaining the inclusion of materials, sounds, and videos taken from their journey to complement those capacities.

The exhibition includes a piece of a ladder Sands and Castillo found during their journey across South America. This archival material brings the border closer to the audience via the tools people used to evade it, evoking reflection on the porous nature of borders, and what it would take to effectively push against peoples movement. As we can see all over the world and all over history, people can [learn to] walk longer, run faster, and jump higher, Sands commented, on the increased militarization of borders. And its not what we need, we dont need to push people to the limits of their capacity.

While grounded in the individual experience, the collection still situates migration as a global crisis bigger than any one countrys bordersa big-picture perspective that Sands and Castillo have always kept in mind. The two cofounded Fractures Photo back in 2011, a collective that explores critical fractures in these critical systems around the world, namely ecological, economic, political, and social, that will define the 21st century. Were entering a new phase of human migration. In many ways it ties back to what we presented as the premise of Fractures as a collective, said Sands.

As of May 2023, more than 110 million individuals have been forcibly displaced as a result of persecution or conflict mixed with the impacts of climate changethe highest level ever recorded. While Europe hosts one in three of the worlds refugees, the U.S. has only admitted 3.5 million since 1975. Today, struggles and tragedies that once seemed far away are arriving at American doorstops, including Chicago, and yet U.S. sanctions imposed on Venezuela, the degradation of Central American land by American companies, and economic exploitation of immigrant labor have always been part and parcel of American prosperity and security. A lot of times, people that are actually being impacted and living these experiences are part of the construction of America, said Sands.

BorderCruzadas was originally commissioned by AWP, with enhanced support for this next phase of the project through the Columbia Colleges Diane Dammeyer Fellowship in Photographic Arts and Social Issues, which was inaugurally awarded to Castillo and Sands this year to further their ongoing project. Indeed, the two photographers embody socially engaged art through their lived reality and work, by blurring the line between personal and political, outsiders and insiders, advocating and documenting, but through it all, making tangible the abstract spaces of migration, borders, and identity.

BordersCruzadas: A Collaborative Story Through 10/27: Mon 12:30-6 PM, Tue 9 AM-noon, Wed 1-4 PM, Thu 10 AM-3 PM, Sat 9 AM-2 PM or by appointment, pfitzpatrick@colum.edu, Community Engagement Hub, Columbia College Chicago, 600 S. Michigan, 1st Fl., everyvoicechicago.com/community

Hortensia Bussi held back tears as she addressed a crowd of more than 2,000 people gathered at DePaul University on a December afternoon in 1973. She was in Chicago because, on September 11, 1973, with spring in the air and Chiles national holiday on the horizon, military aircraft launched from the port city of Valparaso

Art for the Future: Artists Call and Central American Solidarities at the DePaul Art Museum explores a forgotten nationwide solidarity movement. The future was on Lucy Lippards mind in 1982. That year, the art historian, critic, and organizer christened the opening of all-star art collective Group Materials New York exhibition LUCHAR! An Exhibition for the

Brian Herreras magazine features the work of nine artists creating in a world that wont let them represent themselves.

Read this article:
An art project visualizes the migrant crisis - Chicago Reader

Gov. Hochul visited Washington to appeal for more migrant aid Wednesday, emerging with what she characterized as much-needed but insufficient commitments three days after the Biden administration offered New York City a round of criticism over the crisis.

The White House pledged to provide personnel, data and resources to identify thousands of migrants in New York who are eligible for work permits, Hochul said in a statement.

This is a critical first step but make no mistake: it is not enough to fully address this crisis or provide the level of support that New Yorkers need and deserve, the governor added. I am grateful to the White House for agreeing to continue these productive discussions.

Hochul spoke for about 150 minutes with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients, according to the governors office. Her statement described the conversation as frank and productive.

In its own statement, the White House said it would join New York in embarking upon a month of action to help close the gap between non-citizens who are eligible for work authorization and those who have applied.

The arrival of more than 100,000 asylum seekers in New York since last year has severely stretched the citys shelter system and put significant strain on the relationships between Hochul, Mayor Adams and President Biden, who are all moderate Democrats.

As the governor arrived in the nations capital, officials in New York City were still stewing over advice offered by the Biden administration earlier in the week.

Responding to long-running calls from Adams for more federal help and a speech from Hochul last week intended to pressure Biden, the Homeland Security Department on Sunday sent a letter outlining about 24 ways the city could better handle the crisis.

The Biden administrations advice, delivered in parallel documents to Adams and Hochul, also came with a list of 11 New York-area sites suggested as possible migrant shelters.

President Biden has been under pressure from New York officials. (Evan Vucci/AP)

Among the sites: the Atlantic City Airport in New Jersey, a naval center north of Albany in Schenectady, N.Y., and a small airport in Massena, N.Y., according to the list, which was obtained by the Daily News and previously reported by Bloomberg News.

The Massena Airport serves about 30 passengers a day, according to its website. It is located along the Canadian border in a conservative section of the state roughly 300 miles from New York City.

The Homeland Security Department did not immediately reply to a request for comment for this story.

Last week, Hochul said the White House had tentatively offered a long-sought lease agreement that would allow New York to put a state-funded migrant shelter at an airfield in southeast Brooklyn.

But the offer of the site, Floyd Bennett Field on Jamaica Bay, has hardly satisfied New York officials.

Waves of arrivals, many fleeing political and economic turmoil in Central and South America, have sent city officials scrambling over the past year. About 60,000 asylum seekers are currently in New York Citys care, according to the Adams administration.

The city projects the costs of the crisis could balloon to $12 billion by 2025. The population of the shelter system has doubled since last summer.

Responding to the influx, the city has opened more than 200 shelter sites and helped the asylum seekers travel to far-off locations, including Canada.

Weekly

Latest news and more on politics and government in New York City and New York State.

The city has also embarked upon a controversial, trouble-plagued program intended to bus migrants to upstate communities and to cover their board at hotels. The program has been partially derailed by litigation and county-level orders intended to stop the buses.

The city and homeless advocates have implored Hochul to issue a statewide executive order overruling local bans on migrant transports. She has declined to do so, instead urging Biden to accelerate migrants work papers.

This crisis originated with the federal government, and it must be resolved through the federal government, the governor said in her speech last week.

Hochul, who is expected to serve as campaign surrogate for Bidens reelection bid in 2024, has still taken a gentler tone on the White House than Adams, who once said Biden had failed New York City and was later dropped from the surrogate squad.

He did not join Hochul in Washington on Wednesday.

Mayor Adams has said President Biden has "failed" New York on immigration. (Luiz C. Ribeiro/for New York Daily News)

At a news conference Tuesday, Adams continued to express frustration about the lack of support for the city, saying the federal government had not even reached for low-hanging fruit.

They gave us a list of spaces, he said. I am just really baffled that very smart people believe that this is sustainable.

Continue reading here:
After White House meeting, Hochul touts 'first step' on migrant crisis help - New York Daily News