The average nightly rate at a New York City hotel just hit a record high with no relief in sight. The reason? 20% of hotels have become shelters for migrants and the homeless.
Hotels In New York City Have Never Been More Expensive
As highlighted in The New York Times, one of every five hotels is now a shelter in New York City:
Dozens of hotels, from once-grand facilities to more modest establishments, closed to tourists and began exclusively sheltering migrants, striking multimillion-dollar deals with the city. The humanitarian crisis became the hotel industry’s unexpected lifeline in New York; the hotels became a safe haven for tens of thousands of asylum seekers.
Two years in, as the city’s peak tourism season is about to begin, the migrant crisis has helped dramatically shift the hotel landscape in New York. The conversion of hotels to shelters has sharply decreased the supply of rooms just as tourist demand has risen, nearly to prepandemic levels, and is projected to match a record high.
Approximately 135 of the 680 hotels in the city are part of NY’s shelter program, which provides housing to migrants seeking refugee status in the USA. That equates to 16,532 hotel rooms off the market for tourists and even with some new hotel construction, a net loss of thousands of hotel rooms.
It’s a classic case of supply and demand. Demand is up, supply is tight, so naturally prices rise. Yes, there’s inflation too across the economy and Airbnb short-term rentals are now banned. Those are contributing to the price rise as well. But when you take 20% of the supply away and demand stays contestant (or grows), this is no mystery…even the NYT reports on it.
New York City is full of “fleabag” independent hotels, but this program includes hotels from chains like Courtyard, Holiday Inn Express, SpringHill Suites, and Super 8.
And this is no cheap endeavor:
About 65,000 migrants are being sheltered in hotels, tent dormitories and other shelters, in large part because of the city’s legal obligation to provide a bed to anyone who needs one. The city projects it will spend $10 billion over three fiscal years on the migrant crisis.
Under the city’s “Sanctuary Hotel Program,” hotels receive between $139 and $185 per night per room, regardless of whether the room is occupied (the city also provides food for migrants). Many hotels are milking this lucrative program with plans to shut down permanently once the program is over (versus spending millions to renovate in order to make their properties suitable for tourists).
CONCLUSION
If you’re traveling to New York City this summer as a tourist, expect to pay more than ever for a hotel room. As the city continues to address its migrant crisis, hotels are enjoying boom times while tourists are feeling squeezed out.
> Read More: How Pakistan International Airlines Profits Off Refugees In New York
Also, expect New York City to be very dangerous, and not just because of the migrants but because New York City has an insane policy of giving any vagrant the “right” to demand food, shelter, healthcare, and monetary support from taxpayers, and with no incentive to work and earn a living they instead often take drugs and booze and often commit crimes of violence and theft but will almost certainly be released on bail, over, and over, and over again. Many of us have to live in New York City, but I don’t really understand why anybody would come here for tourism at the moment . . . New York City is the worst it’s been in at least 30 years, while also being it’s most expensive ever.
NYC Is very deserving of all of this mayhem and chaos. They voted for their “leadership” and now…they got it.
Brought to you by dementia Joe and the democrats. He really should be impeached for this.
In a strange and indirect way, Trump has more to do with it than Biden. People were comparatively sane before Trump, but Trump’s Presidency led to politicians needing to prove their virtue by outdoing each other to demonstrate how much they were willing to force New Yorkers to sacrifice for the unearned benefit of migrants and less deserving vagrants (sorry, “homeless” in the local modern vernacular), and and all common sense went out the window. Coupled with their simultaneous need to show how far they were willing to go in the name of social justice to allow criminals to commit crimes with no or only minor ramifications, the result is a chaotic, dangerous, smelly, and offensive City run for the benefit of everybody except those who live here.
Blaming Brandon’s actions on “Trump and climate change” is typical of the New York Times .
Every article on a disastrous Brandon policy or event includes references to “Trump and climate change” .
Past migrants were handled differently
The wave of Italians and Irish were not given free housing. They relied on working low paying jobs and the working poor taking care of newer migrants from the same family. No free housing, welfare, and Medicaid.
Have you seen how expensive yard work or a painter is? Make it so these migrants do that
This is the total insanity of New York City and the USA’s immigration policy generally. These migrants crawled over glass to get here so that they could work and earn a living, but we have instead told them once they arrive that “you can’t work, but we will give you everything you need.” The result is that some of the world’s most ambitious people are left with nothing to do but smoke pot on the sidewalk of their free hotel rooms, bored out of their minds, with nothing productive to do, and many counterproductive things to be involved with. The results have been . . . bad.
The criminals from Venezuela didn’t come here to ‘work and earn a living’ .
Testing everyone with one sneeze for a suspicion of Covid was a watchword , however letting in millions of people with more serious diseases is ignored .
I remember during the Mariel Boatlift, people said that Castro was just emptying his jails and insane asylums and that those migrants wouldn’t and couldn’t assimilate. There were truly epic movies made about their criminality. But two generations later, we now know that this was completely wrong, and that these migrants added a tremendous amount to the USA. The Venezuelans could be the same, except for the fact that they and all the migrants are being forbidden from work and instead put immediately on the dole. The risk are the perverse incentives and perverse politicians showering money on their friends, not the migrants.
Brandon is contemplating bringing the Hamasians from Gaza … that will be interesting , no ?
Watching the insanity from Hawaii is slightly amusing , until it arrives here .
The Airbnb effective ban didn’t help either, shifting some tourist demand back into hotels
The real corruption in this story sm are those profiting from renting hotels that were dumps ,prior to the migrants , in need of major renovation. ( my first thought was the Roosevelt PIA deal that is linked in this post. It should have been torn down years ago ) Now the city is paying 200+ per night. Ridiculous. However, the city negotiated these excessive rates and should be accountable, not the migrants.
In the end it’s a win-win for the chains. Their dumps are fetching full rates and they are charging more for their available inventory. I smell a pack of rats.
At the end of the day, the political caste of New York City is enjoying great benefits, while the people get fleeced and forced to live with the constant fear of danger. This is the way it always was, and always will be. New York is a one party state where politicians can win with 16% of the vote . . . because unless you are a Democrat your vote doesn’t even count.
Mak,
What I am suggesting is that this is graft, and graft is immune to political parties. The attraction of money is universal and should be equally punished.
Imagine voting for AOC, Biden and Cackles again for 2024
I prefer president’s that don’t poop themselves in front of world leaders
Biden did exactly that when he met the Pope.
This is precisely why I, a Bostonian, haven’t been to NYC in years. Before the pandemic I was going there each year with my family, to enjoy that wonderful city. I am now avoiding it like the plague.
Meanwhile American veterans live on the streets while the city cares for this foreign scum.
Trump 2024 – deport them all, plus Dementia Joe and his gang of leftist trash.
The comments here, from both sides of the American left/right divide remind me why I left the US and never looked back. Keep it.
And please don’t ever come back commie!
+1
Even with over $62 billion in tax revenue for the city last year, $10 billion in expenditure over 3 years for room and board of migrants is not an easy pill to swallow and may explain why “the former guy” seems to be doing better with possible male voters in the Bronx than he did in 2020 (which was itself an increase in support over 2016). When the pie doesn’t feel like it’s been growing for someone, then that someone is less likely to want their share of the pie to shrink so that newbies can eat from the pie. That said, there was some evidence indicating that poor people tend to be more generous toward beggars on the street than the wealthier.
Some business owners involved in such stuff are real sleazeballs. They milk the situation for everything it’s worth and more and will then possibly declare bankruptcy and let affiliated creditors grab the asset on the relative cheap as part of the plot to “keep it all in the family” and put it back on the market at closer to fair market value or again cater to tourists. The worst of the lot tend to be those owners who are actually very hostile to immigration from poorer countries and are in the business because it’s far more lucrative than what they were otherwise getting for revenue from operating the asset in the previous ways.
The shutting down of basically all AirBnB and VRBOs also has a direct impact on the number of tourists needing hotel rooms. Is is just another factor in the lousy quality of life in NYC.
Vote Trump.
This is an interesting article, but it isn’t a real problem.
20% of hotels are occupying NYC through a government program. That leaves 80% available to be booked, but it pushes the rates up. Hotels set their rates at price points that maximize their revenue, so even with higher rates, people are happy to pay them. What’s the problem here?
Do we have a right to cheap rooms in New York? I’m not sure who I’m supposed to feel sympathy for. Leisure travelers have other options, be it other cities, or suburban hotels with a commute. Corporations seem to be wildly profitable, so it’s hard to feel bad for corporate travelers. NYC hotel workers benefit from high occupancy.
This seems like a story intended to induce rage for no reason other than rage itself.
We all know you would be bitching like everyone else if you had to visit the city and pay out of your own pocket.
I was there earlier this month, and yeah, rates were high. I stayed at the Regency JFK on points. Not ideal, but it worked.
I didn’t have to be in New York, and if room rates were too high, I wouldn’t have gone.
If only there was a program through which property owners with extra space could rent it out to travelers and thereby relieve the room shortage / price pressure NYC is experiencing. Just wishful thinking. #AirBnb
Reading these comments are hilarious. It’s exactly the same thing that happened with Portland – there were some wildly publicized incidents in the city and people decided the entire place was an unlivable hellhole. The worst thing that’s happened as a result of the migrant crisis, as a new yorker, is that I’m frequently offered candy bars for $1 on the subway by well-meaning migrant women who are trying to take care of multiple children.
In some ways NYC is legitimately a great place to have a population influx like this – there are of course long term issues, but at least there are 680 hotels in the city, and not 78..
democrats want this.
They see these invaders as voters.
Its the only way they can continue to win elections.
True- and how sad. People who use other people for gain are not what I want in my neighborhood, much less city, state
@Matthew, there’s a typo here: “demand stays contestant”
constant 🙂