Mayor Eric Adams said the Biden administration needs to get a better understanding of “basic things” tied to the Big Apple’s migrant crisis — as he insisted Tuesday that his time in office has been “successful” and blamed asylum seekers for his historically low polling.
Hizzoner took aim at the federal government just days after returning from yet another fruitless trip to Washington, DC, where he begged White House officials for additional cash to cope with the relentless influx of asylum seekers flooding into the city.
“I’m just not seeing the White House and their colleagues up there understanding that we need a decompression strategy. We should be funding this on a national level, we must make sure we allow people to work. You know, basic things,” Adams told reporters at his weekly press conference.
“I’ve been to DC 10 times and each time I laid out a case on why the city — that’s the economic engine of the state and the country — should not be going through this,” he added. “Walking out, I did not see the level of urgency.”
Elsewhere, Adams suggested a recent drop in his approval rating was linked to his administration being burdened by the national asylum seeker ordeal — and that despite the public perception he was doing a good job in City Hall.
“This has been a successful administration that got hit with a national crisis that I don’t know who would have been able to navigate it the way we’ve been able to navigate it,” he said.
“When you’re in the midst of the storm, it’s hard to see.”
It comes after a Quinnipiac poll released last week showed his rating had dropped to a meager 28% — the lowest recorded for a Big Apple mayor by the university since they started surveying voters a quarter century ago.
Of the registered voters polled, 66% disapproved of the mayor’s handling of the migrant crisis.
Adams, though, doubled down on his approach to grappling with the crisis, arguing on Tuesday that 50% of asylum seekers that have churned through the city’s shelter system are “self-sustaining now.”
He added that more than 80% of adults handed a 30-day notice to vacate shelters hadn’t returned for a bed.
“Not one child or family is sleeping on the streets, unlike other municipalities, sleeping in precincts, sleeping in tents,” the mayor said.
“So I’m just really baffled when I hear people say ‘Eric, you can’t manage the problem.’ What? I managed the hell out of this problem and others are looking at what we are doing.”
Still, in recent months, scores of desperate adult migrants have been spotted sleeping outside intake centers — including the former St. Brigid School in the East Village — in a bid to score a bed in the shelter system.
More than 150,000 asylum seekers have poured into Gotham since spring 2022, with 66,000 currently in the city’s care, according to City Hall’s latest figures.
The feds have so far coughed up $156 million to help the cover the costs of housing migrants — despite Adams estimating the crisis will set the city back $12 billion over the next three years.
“New York City has shown we can manage this if we’re just given a little help,” Adams said. “We have shown that we have the ability to move over 50% of the people and stabilize them.”
“We just need help and we’re not getting that help,” he added. “Cities should not be carrying the burden of a national crisis.”