The Price of Those Randall’s Island Tents? The Comptroller Wants to Know Too
New York City Comptroller Brad Lander called the short-lived tent complex a “debacle” for humanitarian and financial reasons.
Adi Talwar
The tent facility on Randall’s Island, pictured here under construction on Oct. 14. Mayor Eric Adams decided to close the controversial complex last Thursday.
How much is that controversial tent complex for newly-arrived immigrants on Randall’s Island costing New York City taxpayers? Not even the official who oversees city finances knows the answer.
In a letter to the city’s budget office Friday, Comptroller Brad Lander demanded the price tag and contract specifics after Mayor Eric Adams decided to close the refugee camp-style facility less than a month after it opened. City Limits first reported Thursday on the decision to shut down the sprawling structure, known as a “Humanitarian Emergency Relief and Recovery Center” (HERRC), and move residents to a Manhattan hotel—a plan many advocates and lawmakers called for from the start.
“This was a debacle,” Lander told City Limits Friday. “So many people were saying to do this in a hotel from a humanitarian point of view, but that’s true from a resources point of view too.”
The 1,000-bed barracks opened Oct. 19 with initial capacity for 500 people, but hosted relatively few people before a large number of men from West Africa arrived there earlier this month. The site will close sometime this week.
Lander specifically asked the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for “detailed accounting of the costs associated with erecting, dismantling, rebuilding, and operating the HERRC facility initially sited at Orchard Beach and relocated to Randall’s Island.”
Under an emergency procurement order issued in August, and approved by Lander, the Adams administration is not required to share payment information or register contracts with the comptroller when it comes to sheltering newly-arrived immigrants in need of housing and services. Around 23,800 asylum-seekers, many of them from Venezuela, have made their way to New York City in recent months, with about 17,500 receiving some kind of municipal services, the mayor’s office said Thursday.
Lander said the Adams administration has not yet provided a copy of its agreement with the firm SLSCO, a Texas-based contractor that worked on ex-President Trump’s border wall and got paid big bucks to build and operate little-used field hospitals in New York City early in the COVID pandemic.
A report issued Sunday by the Independent Budget Office estimated that the city would spend a combined $16 million on the Randall’s Island HERRC, a social services facility known as a Navigation Resource Center, and translation services in the city’s homeless shelters.
Lander estimated that the short-lived structure will end up costing the city several millions of dollars. But some of the payment information provided to his office differed from cost estimates presented to the media, he added.
Office of Emergency Management (OEM) Commissioner Zach Iscol told reporters last month that the city paid $325,000 to take down the structure in Orchard Beach and another…
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