New York City temporarily houses migrants in the stand-alone gym at PS 188 in Coney Island.
Residents and the school safety agents are not happy:
One neighbor asked why the school was the best place to house migrants.“Why a school? That’s the part I don’t get. There’s always other options. A lot of the buildings around here, they have fallout shelters that are spacious, and used for emergencies,” a woman on the block told The Post.School safety agents who work at PS 188 were also concerned about what their role would be with migrants there.“School Safety Agents are trained to protect children, not migrants. National Guard and federal assistance are needed. We protect City school children. That’s our responsibility. Not migrants,” said Local 237 Teamsters spokesman Hank Sheinkopf in a statement to The Post Sunday.
Principal Leslie King alerted parents last week the city chose the school’s gym as a migrant shelter.
From The New York Post:
Migrants could be seen milling around the Sandra Feldman Gymnasium Sunday night.Antuan, a 21-year-old migrant from Venezuela, told The Post that officials informed him and others they were only staying at the building until Monday.“They put us here because they don’t want us out on the streets,” he explained. “They’re processing us, giving us our paperwork and then we leave.”Antuan, who reached New York on Sunday after eight months in Texas, said all the migrants were given a psychological assessment to determine whether they were dangerous before being sent to the Brooklyn neighborhood.
The news comes a day after hotels booted veterans out to house migrants:
“Our veterans have been placed in another hotel due to what’s going on with the immigrants,’’ said Sharon Toney-Finch, the CEO of the Yerik Israel Toney Foundation.Toney-Finch, a disabled military veteran, created YIT to raise awareness of premature births, as well as helping the homeless and low-income military service veterans in need of living assistance.—She said the hotels didn’t explicitly say the vets had to move because of the migrants but that it was clear to her that was the case, given the timing.All 20 of the booted veterans have ended up at a Hudson Valley hotel about 20 minutes away, said Toney-Finch, who asked that The Post not name the site.
The veterans were supposed to stay at the hotels for up to four weeks until they could find permanent housing.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY