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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. The situation for asylum seekers arriving in New York City and the challenge for Mayor Adams and really for us all have apparently entered a new and more intense face just in the last week. You've probably heard or seen by now that since the weekend, lots of recently arrived people have been sleeping on the street outside the intake center at the Roosevelt Hotel on East 45th Street.

There may be nobody there right now, according to reports I'm getting this morning, but it doesn't mean this phase is over. The mayor says the intake center is full. He's been saying all year that the city is full. Our Liz Kim reports, the mayor is considering tents in Central Park, Prospect Park, and closing off some Randalls Island's soccer fields to adult and youth games and placing tents there.

Now, every attempt at opening new temporary shelters in the city or nearby counties outside seems to be met with a "not in my backyard" protests, whether the shelters are for single men or families with children. The mayor insists the Biden administration still owes the city a lot more help. Some advocates claim the mayor is using asylum seekers as props by letting them sleep outside for Washington to see, but the mayor says, "Not at all."

Mayor Eric Adams: We have run out of ideas. I just really need people to understand, every day, this team is figuring out, "Where do we put the next body?"

Brian Lehrer: What does the city do now and what do the asylum seekers do now? Now, numbering close to 100,000 since the first bus from Texas arrived a year ago this week. Let's talk to two journalists reporting on the situation. Of course, we'll take your calls and comments and stories and questions. Our Liz Kim, WNYC and Gothamist reporter covering Mayor Adams and other New York City politics, and Andy Newman, who covers poverty and social services for The New York Times. Hi, Liz and Andy. Welcome back to WNYC.

Liz Kim: Good morning.

Andy Newman: Hi, Brian. Thank you for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Andy, you wrote this week that New York's descent from a city that was managing to keep up with just barely with a ceaseless flow of asylum seekers to a place that had declared defeat was sudden. Was there a moment last weekend when we can say we entered an apparent new phase?

Andy Newman: I don't know what the actual moment was, but there were people. We went from a phase where by the end of the evening, everybody waiting outside the processing center was somewhere indoors on a bed to a situation where there were people outside overnight because there was no capacity left inside the arrival center where these people are waiting.

Brian Lehrer: What do you mean by the city declared defeat?

Andy Newman: Because the mayor said, "Sorry, there is no more room." That's it, and the city had been scrambling. The city has opened nearly 200 new centers of various kinds, whether in hotels or in all these big humanitarian relief centers that it's opened. It has been finding places to put everybody and just barely managing to do it. Now, the city is saying, even running as fast as we can, we can't keep up anymore.

Brian Lehrer: Now, Liz, your latest article on Gothamist has the headline, Adams Weighs Plan to Set Up Migrant Tents in Central Park and Other Major Green Spaces. What can you tell us about what he's considering?

Liz Kim: Well, the idea of using Central Park and other parks, that was something that was part of a broader list of sites that the mayor's administration had prepared months ago. What I've been told is that talks around that idea have intensified in recent days and that the mayor was even thinking about whether or not to come out and say, "We're actually now going to do this."

That would certainly mark-- if you talk about a new phase in this crisis, you can argue that the new phase was when we started seeing migrants sleeping outside the Roosevelt. To have tents in Central Park, arguably, an iconic green space, one of the most iconic green spaces in the country, in the world, that would certainly put this crisis front and center, not just in front of New Yorkers, but also the rest of the country.

Brian Lehrer: Your article cites other New York politicians who I think we can say are usually to the left of the mayor politically, including on migration, Manhattan and Brooklyn borough presidents Lavine and Reynoso and city council deputy majority leader Diana Ayala, also saying all three of them, the city needs more help and is not really knowing what the options are. Is something changing politically to your eye with this new phase that Andy was describing?

Liz Kim: I think so. The mayor has made no secret that he wants all of his fellow Democrats to rally around him and call for more state and federal intervention. You have seen more elected officials like Mark Levine, like Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, go and visit the Roosevelt and do press conferences in which they call on President Biden to help the city. You have an example there with the Manhattan borough president saying-- Of course, this is not something that he wants to see happen, but he understands that the city is growing increasingly desperate. The councilmember, Diana Ayala, says, "Yes, this is not ideal," but at the same time, she would rather have migrants sleeping in tents as opposed to on city sidewalks.

Brian Lehrer: Andy, what's the scene as of this morning or the last report you had or saw outside the Roosevelt Hotel? I see that Times had a photographer there this morning.

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Brian Lehrer: Do we still have Andy Newman? Did we lose Andy's line for the moment? Okay, we'll get Andy back. We were told off the air that a Times photographer saw about 30 people outside this morning around 7:00 AM near the Roosevelt Hotel, but they're all inside as of a little before we went on the air. We'll get Andy's take on that as soon as we get him back.

Liz, you reported that the mayor was supposed to speak to the public by addressing reporters. We forget what talking to the media is sometimes, right? We make a thing, "Oh, he's not talking to the media. That's how you talk to the public." [laughs] The media is who reports what the mayor says. The mayor was supposed to speak to the public by addressing reporters about the asylum seeker situation yesterday morning, but that got canceled at the last minute. Do you know what happened?

Liz Kim: No. His reporters asked and, basically, they were told that his schedule changed, but that briefing was packed. There were more reporters in what's called the Blue Room than I've seen in some time. The reason was because they were all expecting the mayor to speak. Now, that's a regular weekly briefing that the city holds on to discuss updates on the migrant crisis. It's usually run by the Deputy Mayor of Health and Human Services, Anne Williams-Isom. The mayor does not typically come to those briefings.

The last time he came to one of those briefings, he had a major announcement in which he announced that the city would begin instituting a "60-day rule" for single adult migrants in shelters in which they would have 60 days to stay in one particular shelter, and then they would have to move. If they still don't have housing, they would have to reapply for it. Needless to say, just the mayor announcing the night before that he was going to speak at this briefing, it really had people thinking, "Wow, there might be something, a new policy here to announce." Then when he didn't show, people were just curious, what exactly happened.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Andy, I think you're back with us now. Andy Newman from The Times, who cover social services and poverty. Your article the other day, Tuesday, described close to 200 people, mostly men sleeping on the street around the Roosevelt Hotel in Grand Central there. Have they been the same people day after day or is there turnover in the intake center that allows new people in as others leave or get other placements, or are yet more people newly arriving day by day as this week goes on?

Andy Newman: Yes, a combination of all those things. As of Tuesday, there were people who we talked to out on the line who had been on that line outdoors since Friday or Saturday. They'd been out there for three days and had not really been able to make much progress. Obviously, there are some people who do find a place and they just exit the line and go off to wherever they are staying.

Over the course of this week, the line seems to have gotten smaller overall, though there are always new people coming into the city and new people joining the line. There are people going into the arrival center once space opens up in there. I apologize that this was already gone over while my phone was glitching before. As of this morning, we have a photographer there who said that about seven o'clock in the morning, there were only about 30 people outside. Then shortly before 9:00, they let them all into the arrival center. As of nine o'clock this morning, there was no line at all.

Brian Lehrer: That's a little bit of progress, at least temporarily. Listeners, can you help New York-- Oh, go ahead, Andy.

Andy Newman: No, I was just saying, I sent an email to city hall asking them if something specific happened today to get rid of the backlog. If they reply to me while we're on the air, I'll let you know.

Brian Lehrer: Great. Listeners, can you help New York City solve this problem? What's the answer or what combination of things that can go together? 212-433-WNYC. People have called in already to fill half our lines. The other half are open now that we're giving out the phone number more if you know it. 212-433-9692. You can also text to that number, 212-433-WNYC, or we will watch our Twitter mentions go buy @BrianLehrer.

Listeners, do you believe the mayor that he's doing everything he can do? Do you believe the advocates that he's using unsheltered asylum seekers as props purposely having them sleep outside as a kind of photo op for DC to see or any other questions or comments or stories? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer. Andy, you remind us in a Times article that, unlike other cities, especially in the West, New York is legally required to provide shelter to anyone who asked for it. Can you remind everyone of what that requirement actually is in terms of where, when, and how?

Andy Newman: Yes, the requirement, it holds especially true for single adults. Basically, if you are a single adult and you come to an intake center and you say, "I have no place to sleep," the city must find a place for you to sleep that night. For families, sometimes a family would have to prove that they don't really have any other options. For families in the regular shelter system, a lot of them have to apply multiple times before they finally get in. Assuming that that family also doesn't have any other place to sleep, the city has to find you a bed that night and a shelter.

Brian Lehrer: How unique or unusual is New York among American cities in this respect?

Andy Newman: I do not know of any other American city that has this right to shelter. It was established around 1981 after a lawsuit on behalf of homeless people.

Brian Lehrer: Liz, I see you spoke recently to the lawyer, Robert Hayes, who was significantly responsible for the right-to-shelter policy in the first place. Can you remind us who Robert Hayes is and what his place in history is?

Liz Kim: Well, he's the lawyer who took on the pro bono case that Andy is referencing in the early 1980s. On behalf of a group of homeless men, he brought the case and argued that under the state's constitution, the city is legally obligated to provide those who do not have shelter, housing, and temporary shelter.

Brian Lehrer: Here's some archival audio tape that I think you included in your piece on that. This is Mayor Ed Koch in 1981 opposing the right-to-shelter concept.

Mayor Ed Koch: Imagine what the situation would be if we guaranteed people an efficiency apartment if they came into our shelters. Just imagine. We'd empty out the world.

Brian Lehrer: Historically speaking, Liz, what happened? Did the rest of the world empty out for a free bed in New York City where efficiency apartments, I think that's an old term for studio apartments, ever part of the guarantee?

Liz Kim: No, that hasn't happened. What's going on now is a very unique humanitarian crisis. I followed up with Robert Hayes. I asked him, "What should the city do in this instance?" You can argue that when he argued for the right to shelter that he and advocates never predicted that there could have been a situation like this in which there is a very sudden surge of people who show up in the city needing housing and taking advantage of that right.

What he said to me is a law is only valuable if it applies even during these periods where there is a crisis. You can argue that that's when it is most important to see it through. He very much expects the city to follow through with this law. As we know, Adams has actually tried to challenge the right to shelter in court. He and Legal Aid Society, which represents homeless individuals, are currently negotiating on what should they do, that the city wants to roll back certain requirements, and that's currently being contested.

Brian Lehrer: One more clip of Mayor Koch in 1981 defending the city as already uniquely compassionate and generous. This is short. Listen up.

Mayor Ed Koch: There's no other city that does what we do. None. None.

Brian Lehrer: Sounds a little like Eric Adams today, the mayor who said this the other day.

Mayor Eric Adams: We have no more room in the city.

Brian Lehrer: Andy, is it fair to say that Adams is facing a situation beyond anything Ed Koch was dealing with in 1981?

Andy Newman: It certainly seems like that, Brian. Just the sheer numbers, nearly 100,000 people above and beyond. Don't forget that there are still all the people who were homeless, who are from New York, who had been living in New York. That number, that baseline number has been increasing a bit under Adams. On top of that, you have 100,000 migrants in the space of the year. What does that work out to? On certain days, it's been 1,000 people a day. It's been consistently, the last few weeks, over 2,000 people per week. That's just an amazingly large number of beds to have to come up with each and every week. That is what the city is struggling with.

Brian Lehrer: Liz, did you get to ask Robert Hayes if he sees a historical difference between what he was after with his lawsuit in the 1980s, which I'm imagining he would characterize as making sure New Yorkers who lived here who fell on hard times were guaranteed a bed, and their sudden arrival in one year's time of 100,000 new folks?

Liz Kim: Well, the way he argued the right to shelter was he pointed to an article in the state constitution. It was an article that was written during the Depression. It basically says that the government has an obligation to take care of the needy and the vulnerable. What he said to me, "What more of a crisis could you have than the Depression?" As bad as this current humanitarian crisis is, it does not compare to the depression where there were record unemployment and people without enough to eat.

That is his basis, right? This was something that the people who wrote that article into the Constitution did during times of extreme duress, right? Why should we not be required to uphold it now? His feeling is that this is a crisis, but that it is temporary, and that he thinks that this will pass. This is testing the merits of that law and undergirding it, the state constitution.

Brian Lehrer: Some comments coming from listeners. Liz, you just mentioned the depression. Listener tweets at us, "tent cities in Central Park. Why aren't there Hooverville encampments in the parks during the Great Depression? What will we call this latest monument to defeat? Adamsberg?" Before we go into some other listener comments and there are a lot of calls coming in, Michaleen in Floral Park, you'll be the first caller. Hang in there. Andy, I guess the mayor might say if somebody suggested that we call tent cities in the parks Adamsberg, he might say they should be called Bidenville.

Andy Newman: Yes, he has been very openly critical of the President and urging Washington both to send more aid to New York and, really importantly, to speed up or to come up with a way to get these folks who are coming up from other countries, immediate work authorization, because one of the reasons that people don't have any way to support themselves is because they can't legally work here. If people could legally work, then they would be able to find housing, and a lot of this problem would go away.

Brian Lehrer: Another listener sarcastically tweets, "If the migrants were a basketball team, we would build a stadium for them." Someone else tweets, "How about declaring eminent domain on some of the vacant property speculators have laid claim to across the city?" There are others like that. Let's see. These texts are going by so fast that I'm losing them from my view. I'm going to have to paraphrase here. A few people have texted us, Liz, "Can the city use some of the empty office space to put migrants in?"

Liz Kim: That's something that the city has done and it continues to try to do. They have reached out to private commercial space owners to ask them if they are willing to lease and allow migrants to use those spaces. I think they're running up against-- I think there's a limit to how many people want to give up those spaces for migrants. There's also a question of whether that's really even appropriate temporary shelter for migrants because you have to start thinking about, where do they shower? How many bathrooms are there? Where would they eat? Is there a kitchen? I think even that concept runs up against some limitations and also, obviously, supply.

Brian Lehrer: A listener texts, "We have to take care of--"

Andy Newman: Brian--

Brian Lehrer: Oh, Andy, go ahead.

Andy Newman: Oh, I was just going to say, my colleague, James Barron, had a really good piece in the New York Today column this morning where he talked to various players about what are the real options. Does the city have other pools of space that it can draw on? One of the people he talked to was a real estate appraiser, Jonathan Miller, who said that just the cost of remodeling some kind of office to turn it into a shelter is so large that it would be a non-starter for most developers. There was a certain amount of low-hanging fruit in terms of space. The city seems to have gobbled up most of it. Everything else that's left, though the city is planning to open a couple of more big relief centers, is going to be trickier and trickier.

Brian Lehrer: Although I saw in an article on Crain's, Andy, that people in the hotel business are suddenly bullish on New York because the city will pay them to house asylum seekers. Even if the number of tourists is still down compared to pre-pandemic days, they say it's not the same as with the office spaces because hotel rooms do have showers and other kinds of facilities for people who would stay there. Suddenly, there's an interest in investing in hotel space according to one article that I read. Have you seen anything like that?

Andy Newman: My colleague, James, also talked to the head of the Hotel Association of New York City who said that because September tends to be a busy month for hotels and there's a crunch upcoming, he said that he thought it would be until January before more hotels would be interested in housing people. Also, though, note that it tends to be very, very expensive to put people in hotels. The city is looking to contain costs obviously.

Brian Lehrer: Michaleen in Floral Park, you're on WNYC. Thank you so much for calling in. Hi there.

Michaleen: Thank you, Brian. Thank you. You're a treasure. You are the best.

Brian Lehrer: You are too nice.

Michaleen: I am a little concerned that the churches, if your guests, they know what the churches try to help the mayor. Because as church member, we go to church and we give tithe. It's 10% of your paycheck. You give tithe to the church. You see the pastor's car is the latest Porsche or the latest Mercedes. When we have a crisis like that, I don't hear about the church helping. We have a lot of Spanish people come and we have so many Spanish churches side by side. On one avenue, you can have at least six or seven churches. San Cristóbal Sangre de Jesus and Pentecostal churches. What are they doing to help with the money that the members--

Brian Lehrer: Yes, thank you. Thank you. We have a text that backs that up that asks and adds another group to it, "What are the churches and the charitable foundations doing?" Liz or Andy? Liz, you first. I don't know if there's any answer to that question. I imagine a lot of churches with populations from some of the countries that are sending the most asylum seekers are probably doing a lot, but I don't see it in the news. Do we know if there's any kind of answer to Michaleen's question?

Liz Kim: Well, the city is, in fact, partnering with churches. That was an initiative that they announced, I believe, several months ago. The churches participate by offering both meals and also a place to stay. In return, the city does actually compensate the churches for it. Now, again, not every church has the room, the facilities, the large-enough kitchen, the number of showers that they would need to do this, but the city has done outreach. There have been churches who have volunteered their spaces.

Brian Lehrer: Andy, anything on that?

Andy Newman: No, nothing to add to that.

Brian Lehrer: All right. We're going to take a short break. We have a lot more calls. We have a lot more suggestions of things to do. Stay with us and Andy Newman from The Times and Liz Kim from our newsroom. Brian Lehrer on WNYC.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC as we continue to discuss the situation for asylum seekers arriving in New York City and the challenge for Mayor Adams and really, for us all, apparently entering a new and more intense phase. Andy Newman, who reports on social services and poverty for The New York Times, actually wrote in one of his articles this week that the city has now declared defeat after barely but managing to find beds for all the new arrivals over the last year. He's one of our guests and WNYC and Gothamist's Liz Kim, who covers Mayor Adams and other New York City politics.

Here's another text that has come in trying to take a broader view of solutions than a piecemeal view like, what if you use hotels? What if you use office buildings? What if you use tents in Central Park? "The asylum seeker crisis is unique," writes this listener, "not only in the sheer numbers of individuals coming into the city per day and having to identify beds but in the context of what is the long-term plan for people who are non-citizens. It's not as though there's an intake process to connect those people to social services and work in the long-term process as well."

"As one suggestion for a solution," writes this listener, "I think that we should go beyond looking at hotels for available spaces, but also looking at nursing homes. I think that people should think about adopting a family and let's take some collective responsibility for this crisis. Also, there is so much land." Andy, I don't know about nursing homes. I think they have enough to deal with, but some of those other solutions that go beyond individual kinds of facilities and trying to get all New Yorkers to think of it as a collective responsibility.

After all, most New Yorkers, if they're not immigrants themselves, they're children or grandchildren or great-grandchildren of immigrants, and to get people to take folks into their homes or other things that individuals and community groups could do to step up. How much do they have conversations like that at city hall? Actually, let me throw this to you, Liz, since you're the city hall reporter in the room. How much do they have conversations like this at city hall, if at all if you know?

Liz Kim: Well, one question that I put to the mayor, I believe, is this week where recently was he's made very clear that he has three asks of the federal government. One is funding. The other is to expedite these work authorizations that would allow the migrants to work legally. Then the third is what he calls a so-called decompression strategy at the border, where he would like the federal government to step in and direct migrants across various cities so that they're not just coming to New York City. I asked him. Basically, he has asked for these three things for almost a year now.

The question I put to him is, "Is there a fourth idea?" His answer was, "No, there's not a fourth idea. I think what we need to do is continue to double down on these three ideas." I think that that might prove to be problematic. Because as the listener pointed out, we need to start looking long-term at how do we address the influx of immigrants coming to the city and what are the services they need and what is the kind of maybe case management, the shelter system, which may not have been so good at before when it comes to immigrants. What kind of expertise do they need to know and apply towards these new members of our city?

Brian Lehrer: Of course, on mass numbers of New Yorkers taking people in, well, our next segment after we're done with this is going to be a proposal from journalist Ross Barkan for a solution to the ongoing housing shortage as it is in New York City and vicinity. How many people have an extra bedroom? Something like that is probably not scalable to make much of a difference, but it's certainly a good idea. A communitarian approach to it is certainly something that probably would make a difference in some way, whatever the individual solutions are, instead of people just looking to, "Well, what's the mayor doing? What are the opponents of the mayor saying?" Clements in Washington Heights, you're on WNYC. Hello, Clements.

Clements: Hi. I'm not anti-liberation at all. I consider myself to be a liberal, but--

Brian Lehrer: Anti-immigration, you mean?

Clements: Yes, anti-immigration. That's what I meant. I'm assuming that these individuals are being sent from Texas and Florida, is that correct?

Brian Lehrer: That is correct.

Clements: All of them or most of them?

Brian Lehrer: Well, many.

Clements: Okay, why can't we send them back?

Brian Lehrer: Andy, that's interesting. Yes, like Governor Abbott, Governor DeSantis, you want to stage a stunt by busting people to New York? We'll bust them back to you.

Andy Newman: I think at this point, I don't think most of the people who are coming to New York are being bused up here specifically by Republican governors, whether it's Abbott or DeSantis. There are so many different routes to people coming here. I don't think it's merely a stunt by the Republicans at this point.

Brian Lehrer: Missy in Chelsea, you're on WNYC. Hi, Missy.

Missy: Hi. Can you hear me?

Brian Lehrer: I can hear you.

Missy: Hello?

Brian Lehrer: Yes.

Missy: Oh, okay. Hi. My suggestion, two things. One, this has been over two years in the making. I'm so annoyed that the mayor keeps acting like this is just a new thing because we've seen the migrant problem. We knew it was coming our way. The second thing is I believe that there are spaces for migrants. You could create a whole intake center over at Fort Totten, which is a decommissioned army base that has barracks, a large parade ground, bathrooms in the houses. Houses are being used for offices now, but there's plenty of room there and also--

Brian Lehrer: That's at the Queens' foot of the Throgs Neck Bridge for people who don't know Fort Totten. Go ahead.

Missy: Governors Island has room and has barracks as well. They need to be revived because they're sitting empty and just decaying. There are a lot of unexplored spaces and that the mayor just keeps going on and on about there's nothing, but there are spaces. Maybe not 100,000, but you've got to just divvy them up around the city. There certainly are spaces better than Central Park.

Brian Lehrer: Missy, thank you very much. Yes. Although, Liz, I grew up near Fort Totten, the people there now are very happy that it's been turned primarily into a park. The reaction in that area of Queens would probably be similar to the reaction of people around Central Park if it was used as a tent city. Same thing with Governors Island, right?

The city's always debating what to do with Governors Island. There are wonderful things going on there now that are in effect, a public park that you can take a ferry to from Lower Manhattan. I imagine the response to the idea of populating Fort Totten or Governors Island with migrants is not going to be that much different than populating Central Park or Prospect Park or Randalls Island, which are apparently in the mix.

Liz Kim: Right. Part of the conversations I was having with people about this idea of, "Why would the mayor consider such a prominent location like Central Park?" The feeling is, and the mayor himself has said it, he thinks that the city is-- in a way, very similar to what Mayor Koch said, that the city is a victim of its own success. He argues that his administration has done such a good job up until now of housing the migrants that your average New Yorker is largely unaware that there's even a crisis going on.

I think the feeling is that should the city at this point make it more public and perhaps they can arise. It might result in a backlash, but it might also get more New Yorkers to rally around him and say, "Yes, the President needs to step in. The President needs to do aid. The President needs to come up with some policy ideas." I think that that is his thinking around, what is his next step? Does he make this more of a public prominent issue? There obviously is political risk to that.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Even when it's not parks, even when it's indoor facilities, there is so much pushback, right? There are two stories out of other parts of Queens over the last week. One from a plan to house some migrants at a facility on the grounds, I believe, of the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center, and the neighbors don't want that. There was another one in Queens. One of those is for men only and that gets pushed back, but the other one was for families with children. Even that got pushed back.

A listener writes on a text message, "Why not look to the suburbs of New York City, individual host, families, hotels, possible encampment spaces, the communities in the tri-state, better interconnected, socioeconomically with our city is the city asking for their help?" Andy, we know that the city has been trying to place people in hotel rooms in some of the suburban counties. The reaction there by county executives said, "We have to file lawsuits against the city." There's NIMBY everywhere you turn on this, right?

Andy Newman: Yes, there is. The city is battling with a bunch of counties. They're looking not just in the immediate vicinity of New York City, but they're sending people as far away as Albany and Buffalo. Basically, the mayor's looking to offload every single person that he can and having a fight pretty much across the board.

Brian Lehrer: One more call. Jim in Spring Lake in Jersey, you're on WNYC. Hi, Jim.

Jim: Hi, Brian. Good morning. Thanks for having me on and thanks for doing this segment. It's really important. I have experienced this. I worked in the refugee camps on Lesbos, Greece in 2015 to 2016 during the height of the Syrian refugee crisis. I know it seems like, "Hey, we got a lot of people coming into the Greater New York City area." We might have thousands arrive by day, not 2,000 a week, right?

Thousands could arrive by day. It can be overwhelming but certainly can be managed. I do have some sympathy for the mayor of New York City. I was collaborating with the mayor of Lesbos at that time. Now, that was an island of 80,000 people in the poorest country or one of the poorest countries in Europe at the time. Greece was in some rough shape coming out of their financial crisis and then was thrown this refugee crisis of 500,000 people coming through that island.

I sat in on a meeting at the invitation of the mayor of Lesbos with representatives from the US State Department, our Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and the US Embassy. After sitting through an hour-and-a-half of that meeting after they left, I had to sadly say to the mayor as an American, knowing what was said and not said that the US government was going to do nothing to help them manage this crisis.

I hope that will not be the reality for the mayor of New York. I do agree with him and his push to have President Biden and the federal government provide a greater federal response on this issue. This is a federal issue that New York City and its citizens should not be left up to their own devices to have to manage this. If we put the principle of subsidiarity into effect with regard to governance, again, it's not a local issue. It's not a state issue. This is a federal issue.

Therefore, it needs federal resources, federal leadership, federal guidance. As far as some of the callers who've suggested different things that we can do, I do love leaning more on our churches. As someone who's a Catholic theologian, I taught at a Catholic high school in New York City. There are so many resources there within the Catholic community in particular. There are more than 260 parishes within the New York Archdiocese. I would love to have an accounting of what each and every one of them are doing.

One of the reasons that churches get tax breaks is to fill in gaps for non-governmental services, right? I would say that churches have a moral certainly and a financial responsibility, again, because this is why they get tax breaks to do things at times that the government might need help with. Again, we need an accounting. When people are saying, "Has the mayor done enough? Is the mayor using these refugees, these asylum seekers as props?" I'm not sure.

I don't think any of us can be, who aren't in those rooms to see what has been done. Questions I have, one, how much pressure has been leveraged on the churches? I've just given the numbers for the Catholic churches in the New York Archdiocese. Has the mayor called on the International Rescue Committee, the UN, Samaritan's Purse, Global Empowerment Mission?

These massive non-governmental organizations that I've worked with, whether it was on Lesbos or the refuge situation or down in the Bahamas after Hurricane Dorian hit or down in Puerto Rico after Maria hit, have they been brought to the table to say what resources can be brought to bear to help us manage this? I do think this is also a moral test for New York City, which claims to be a very liberal city. Again, it isn't just the people of New York.

This is everyone who claims to be center to the extreme left here in the United States needs to ask, "What am I doing? What am I doing to help manage this crisis? Would I be willing to spearhead an effort to bring a refugee family into our community, whether it's in New York City or outside New York where they could have access to resources?" A lot of people who are calling in are just talking about the physical infrastructure. We could house them here. We could put them in the Fort. We could put them in these hotels.

The amount of infrastructure that's needed on a human resource standpoint, who is going to manage those facilities? This is where those federal resources come in. You're going to need 10 people who are being paid six-figure salaries because they're going to be running massive operations to manage the back end of the social services that will be needed by these individuals. One other idea that I would throw out as someone whose family has owned a tavern in New Jersey for 41 years and talking to my fellow restaurant colleagues who many are in desperate need of help, particularly in our kitchens.

Yes, expedite that working paper process. We could be reaching out to restaurants in the tri-state area and saying, "How many people do you need?" "What are your exact needs?" We're going to get you matched up with three people. We're going to work with the State Department. We just ran a quick background check. They're coming to you. You are responsible for their work, for their housing, and for making sure they're connected to legal services.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. Since they're looking for workers put some of that housing and other kinds of responsibility on them. Certainly, we know that the mayor has been asking Washington for a faster work authorization process so migrants can get to work quicker legally and start to support themselves. Jim, thank you for that comprehensive call. Liz, maybe we should send that call to the mayor and say, "Jim from Spring Lake for Migrant Czar in New York City."

Liz Kim: Well, I was going to say, the mayor, he does, in fact, have a position for an asylum seeker czar. I was going to say Jim should apply.

Brian Lehrer: We had the same thought. As we run out of time, just to focus it back on President Biden for the moment. Liz, Adams was in DC last week. I don't remember if he met with the President personally or representatives of the President. The outcome of that, as I've read it, is that they assigned a federal liaison to New York City for the asylum seeker surge.

The New York Post headline at least that I saw the other day found that laughable. In fact, their headline recalling the old Ford to City: Drop Dead from President Ford in the fiscal crisis of the 1970s, the headline was Biden to City: Drop Dead. That was the New York Post response to-- Oh, the only response from the President to the mayor was appointing a liaison. Is that the only response? What do you have on that?

Liz Kim: Well, certainly, those of us that have been following this closely, it was very underwhelming that the mayor traveled to DC. He met the Secretary of Homeland Security. At the end of the meeting, the mayor puts out a press release. Basically, he just says what you just said, which is that he agreed to make a personal visit. He agreed to assign a liaison that would be a go-between on this particular issue between the city and the federal government.

Again, the mayor has been asking for three things and a liaison was not one of them. I think the mayor tried to spin it in a positive light by thanking both the Secretary of Homeland Security and the congressional delegation that helped arrange that meeting. To all of us that have been watching him for the last year advocate on that crisis, it was a disappointing visit.

Brian Lehrer: Andy Newman, for you from The New York Times with your beat being poverty and social services, I'll give you the last word. I wonder if you had a reaction to the caller, Jim, talking about taking a kind of data-driven census of churches and what they're doing in our area. Because I imagine churches, which already do a lot to provide social services for people in poverty in and around New York City, might respond, "We're doing what we can, but it's not like we're just hanging out and having Sunday services."

Andy Newman: I don't really know how much capacity there is in churches. There are certainly not just the 260, or whatever the number was, Catholic churches in the New York Archdiocese. There were hundreds of other Catholic churches in other diocese in other parts of the city, including Brooklyn and Queens. There are obviously thousands of churches and mosques and synagogues and other houses of worship in the city. I don't know how willing all those places are going to be to simply open their doors. some more than others, I'm sure.

Brian Lehrer: Probably depends on the demographics of the different congregations too, how willing those folks would be. Andy Newman covers poverty and social services for The New York Times. Liz Kim covers Mayor Adams and other New York City politics for us. Thank you both for joining us on this crucially important topic.

Liz Kim: Thanks, Brian.

Andy Newman: Thank you, Brian.

 

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