New York migrant shelter reportedly allowed sexual harassment to continue for months

A New York Metropolis shelter with a $10m contract to home feminine migrants and their households is accused of permitting those that lived there to be sexually harassed and abused for months earlier than reporting the abuse to officers.

Residents told The City that whereas they have been residing in a transformed lodge in Sundown Park, they have been propositioned for intercourse, harassed with inappropriate remarks, and threatened with retaliation over potential complaints.

The abuse was allegedly perpetrated by employees members. One worker allegedly known as a Venezuelan asylum seeker a sexist epithet, and that very same worker allegedly waved a wad of money at one other Venezuelan asylum-seeker, suggesting he wished to pay her for intercourse.

“Nobody was going to imagine me,” one of many migrants informed The Metropolis in Spanish. “I didn’t say something.”

Throughout an alleged assembly with shelter management, one of many migrants making allegations was reportedly informed she was carrying too wanting shorts, and the worker who allegedly harassed her reportedly remained with the shelter afterwards for a time regardless of the complaints.

Regardless of metropolis guidelines requiring the New York Division of Homeless Companies to be alerted of suspected mistreatment inside 24 hours, the alleged misconduct continued for months unreported. Finally, the manager director of the 163rd Road Enchancment Council, which oversees the shelter, alerted officers on the Division of Homeland Safety.

A high worker on the shelter has been suspended pending a evaluate of the allegations by an outdoor legislation agency, in accordance to the New York Division of Social Companies. Town’s Division of investigation can also be investigating the shelter, primarily based in a rented out GLo lodge.

The Unbiased has contacted 163rd Road Enchancment Council in addition to the worker who has been suspended for remark.

New York has spent latest months ramping up its shelter capability because it handles a rise in migrants arriving within the metropolis.

As of final week, the town’s shelter inhabitants reached almost 100,000, double in dimension since final yr, with about 48,700 of these folks being asylum seekers, according to The New York Post. Town is paying an estimated $7.9m a day to home them.

The wave of migration, pushed by every part from political crises in Venezuela, to red-state governors deliberately bussing migrants to New York as a political stunt, to the top of draconian Trump-era immigration insurance policies like Title 42 that quickly depressed migration, has led to the town in search of emergency shelter contracts with social service suppliers, together with some who haven’t beforehand overseen household shelters.

In October of 2022, New York Metropolis mayor Eric Adams declared a state of emergency relating to migration.