Eastern Queens elected officials gathered with constituents inside Building #4 of the Services Now For Adult Persons (SNAP) in Queens Village on Thursday afternoon to voice their opposition to the incoming asylum seeker tent shelter on the nearby campus of the state-owned Creedmoor Psychiatric Center.
The rally came just one day after Mayor Eric Adams’ announcement that the city will construct and open a Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Center (HERRC) in Creedmoor’s adjacent parking lot for 1,000 single adult men “seeking asylum.”
Eastern Queens Councilwoman Linda Lee, who led the press conference, told attendees her opposition is all about practicality.
“This is not about xenophobia…but we have a crisis that we’ve been dealing with on the city level since last year,” Lee said. “We have to look at this in terms of how is this making sense? How are we going to address this issue? Is Creedmoor the site? No.”
Following Lee, state Sen. Toby Ann Stavisky added that Creedmoor is “not a place to dump a thousand people,” pointing to the building’s infrastructure as a disadvantage to the asylum seekers and calling it “a lose-lose situation.”
“The infrastructure is just not there. The air conditioning, the heating, everything,” Stavisky said. “The asylum seekers are being put into what I suspect, and what I think we all suspect, is an inhumane situation.”
During the rally, Assemblyman Edward C. Braunstein touched on the geography of Creedmoor in relation to the rest of the city, referring to the surrounding area as “a transit desert.”
“There’s nothing here,” Braunstein said. “The asylum seekers who are going to be staying here will have nothing, nowhere to go, nowhere to get services, and quite frankly, I don’t think that they’re going to even want to be here.”
Assemblyman David I. Weprin added to Braunstein’s point by emphasizing the need to address the crisis but reiterating opposition to erecting an…
Read the full article here
