Lady Gaga‘s father has led the charge against hundreds of migrants who have ‘taken over’ his ritzy New York City neighborhood – claiming they are abusing residents.
The pop star’s dad Joe Germanotta, 66, lives in The Pythian on the Upper West Side – just down the street from the Stratford Arms Hotel, which has been transformed into a shelter for 500 migrants.
He has now claimed that the streets are overrun with partying, prostitution, and reckless behavior because of the new neighbors.
On average, 2,300 migrants are arriving in the Big Apple each week – depleting the city’s finite resources and buckling the welfare system.
He told the New York Post: ‘There’s now 500 migrants living in that dormitory. That’s when all the mayhem began. Hookers are coming and going. In the mornings, you see prostitutes coming out of the building.
The pop star’s dad Joe Germanotta, 66, lives in The Pythian on the Upper West Side – and just down the street, the city transformed the Stratford Arms Hotel into a shelter for 500 migrants
The Pythian on the Upper West Side, where Lady Gaga was brought up
‘The worst part’s at night. The noise. It starts at about 10 o’clock, and it’ll go until 4 in the morning. Playing music and racing their motocross and motorbikes up and down the streets.’
‘Put the proper security in place, have a police presence and a code of conduct. They’re guests in our neighborhood, and they have basically taken over.’
Germanotta said none of the UWS residents were given any notice about the migrant shelter – and trash and needles now litter the once-clean sidewalks.
While he said the migrants are probably good people, he said their anti-social behavior was becoming a problem, and the people who decided to place them in the building have ‘screwed’ the locals.
They are even catcalling teenage girls as young as 14, New Jersey-born Germanotta said.
The now-migrant center used to house the American Music and Dance Academy.
He said about Eric Adams’ response to the crisis: ‘In my opinion, you should have just suspended ‘sanctuary city’ status until we had enough housing and then said, ‘Yeah, OK, you can send some more.
Migrants sleeping outside the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown last week
Germanotta said that none of the UWS residents were given any notice about the migrant shelter – and trash and needles now litter the once-clean sidewalks
‘It’s a joke. Why doesn’t he get one of the cruise ships? The cruise ships hold more people, and it’s a more controlled environment.
‘The city is spending a tremendous amount of money that could be spent towards building affordable housing.
‘The really sad part is that in the neighborhood, we still have our share of veterans and homeless — but we’re not taking care of our own.
‘They don’t get food every day. It’s really sad. I feel for them.’
Just last week, the corner of East 45th Street and Vanderbilt Avenue in Manhattan had been the epicenter of the country’s migrant influx.
Asylum seekers are held prior to being transferred via city bus from Port Authority bus terminal to housing facilities in the Bronx and Queens
A migrant family eats outside of the Roosevelt Hotel where dozens of recently arrived migrants have been camping out
Hundreds lined the block hoping to get inside the makeshift processing center after coming to the area on buses from the south.
The scene left residents angry as they demanded Mayor Eric Adams do more.
The Roosevelt Hotel and others have become hubs for refugees – within walking distance from Times Square, the World Trade Center memorial site and the Empire State Building.
Over the weekend, the migrants were handed small red tickets with digits on them – and once in a while hotel workers would come out and call numbers to let people inside the air-conditioned lobby.
A large migrant family arrived with their bags at the Roosevelt Hotel on Wednesday
Over the past few months, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has bused nearly 10,000 migrants into the Big Apple
Some family members were once again forced to wait outside for processing
Others, desperately pushing closer to the front to get inside, were left to wait outside in the New York City heat.
Earlier today, Eric Adams said the city will spend $12billion by 2025 to provide housing and services for the flood of migrants arriving in the cities by buses as the city scrambles to provide shelter.
‘We are facing an unprecedented state of emergency,’ Adams declared, again demanding the feds provide more support. ‘The immigration system in this country is broken, it has been broken for decades.
‘Today, New York City has been left to pick up the pieces,’ Adams said.
The Democratic mayor has been slammed for his lack of response to the migrant crisis currently afflicting New York City, as he has continued to blame the lack of federal support.
Adams said the city spends more than $9million per day to house, feed and support the asylum seekers.
Even more are arriving weekly — with buses seen arriving Wednesday morning at the Roosevelt Hotel to drop off more migrants for processing.
The huge facility is under construction as Mayor Eric Adams’ administration is forced to take increasingly radical measures to handle tens of thousands of asylum seekers who have arrived in the city in recent months
It’s the second time Randall’s Island, which sits just across the East River from Manhattan’s Upper East Side, has been used for a migrant facility
There are already more than 57,000 migrants sleeping in city shelters and emergency housing system
City officials had previously estimated the city would spend about $4.3billion by the end of the 2024 fiscal year in July on housing, feeding and providing services to migrant families.
Since then, however, the number of migrants coming into the city has skyrocketed and city officials are now spending an average of $9.8million each day – or more than $300 million per month.
By July 2024, the city is now expected to spend as much as $6.1billion.
‘New Yorkers’ compassion may be limitless, but our resources are not,’ Adams said Wednesday. ‘And our partners at the state and federal levels know this.’
There are already more than 57,000 migrants sleeping in city shelters and emergency housing systems, and more were seen being bused into the city on Wednesday.
Work was well underway Wednesday on a Randall’s Island shelter roughly the length of two football fields, which will accommodate up to 2,000 migrants
Over the past few months, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has bused nearly 10,000 migrants into the Big Apple.
One of those migrants, a Columbian named Luis, told DailyMail.com on Wednesday how he and his family have spent a month at New York’s Roosevelt Hotel after making a grueling journey across several borders, including through Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Mexico.
Their journey included an eight-day trek through the jungle, said Luis, who spoke little English.
New York is bound by a decades-old consent decree in a class-action lawsuit to provide shelter for those without homes.
The city is scheduled to open a shelter on soccer fields on Randall’s Island, and a relief center at the former Creedmore Psychiatric Center in Queens — both of which would reportedly be state-funded.
And on Friday, workers were seen unloading items from trucks to retrofit the Play Center at McCarren Park, Brooklyn, which sits between the ultra-expensive Greenpoint and Williamsburg neighborhoods.
Migrants will now live in temporary housing in the park’s recreation center, which is popular with residents of the affluent and uber-liberal Williamsburg neighborhood thanks to its swimming pool and gym.
The facilities in the recreation center will be not be impacted by the new residents, local representatives said in a joint statement.
