The iconic luxury Roosevelt Hotel in New York City will reopen as a makeshift shelter, the latest attempt to manage the intense influx of asylum seekers expected to flood the city in coming weeks after the expiration of an immigration law called Title 42. According to the Associated Press, the Roosevelt is among a number of hotels “that are being transformed into emergency shelters, many of them in prime locations within walking distance from Times Square, the World Trade Center memorial site and the Empire State Building.” A legal mandate requiring the city to provide shelter is breathing life back into other hotels as well, including the Holiday Inn, located in Manhattan’s Financial District, and The Watson Hotel on West 57th Street. “They rent out every room at the hotel at a certain price every night,” Scott Markowitz of Tarter Krinsky & Drogin, attorneys for the hotel’s owner, said, adding that the business is seeing “substantially more revenue” than normal. New York City Council members Justin Brannan and Ari Kagan also tweeted that 75 adult migrant couples will be temporarily housed inside a gymnasium at a school in Coney Island, with Brannan describing it as a “puzzling move.” Kagan, where the school’s district sits, said Sunday that there was “no timeframe” for when the gym may be in operation again.
Read it at The Associated Press
