Staten Island migrant shelter suffering a sewage crisis that stinks up the neighborhood as residents complain the building was never suitable to house people – ‘It’s disgusting and nobody should be subject to that’

The migrant crisis worsens in New York City as a Staten Island shelter continues to cause hygiene issues in the area. 

School turned controversial shelter, St. John Villa Academy is currently housing nearly 300 migrants, something it was never built to do. 

The 67-year-old building is currently acting as full-time residence and bathroom for the migrants in the area. Due to the age and purpose of the building, it was never meant for 24/7 use, and the ejector pumps are incapable of moving huge quantities of raw sewage into the city’s sewers. 

To address the issue, a septic-treatment company visits the location multiple times a day to pump the raw sewage into a concrete pit, which usually takes 15 minutes and takes it away. During this time, the abhorrent smell plagues the neighborhood.

Scott Herkert who lives adjacent to the shelter told DailyMail.com: ‘So directly connecting to my property is the school and along the fence that’s connecting, they have their showers which I’m sorry, shower slash bathrooms.

‘At least once a day they’re coming in and they’re pumping these out and when they do pump it out, it smells, it smells like what you would expect it to smell. They’re pumping out a bathroom and the f*** out of here and shit.’

He says that the street is closed off and will remain so until the issue is resolved. 

Herkert further criticizes the government and says that they are lying and handling the situation terribly. 

‘You’re lying to the people, you’re lying to the people about the border crisis, you’re lying to the people in the cities and the communities had we not exposed this,’ he tells DailyMail.com

Herkert also claimed that while the school in the area and the Church have asked people to be compassionate towards the migrant crisis, the Church is allegedly building a 10 feet fence around the school. 

Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella had already said that the building was categortized inhabitable and ‘not viable’ for a shelter by the city. 

This comes three days after NYC mayor Eric Adams issued a warning that the the city will be destroyed by the current migrant crisis. 

Adams is pleading for federal and state aid – asking a judge to suspend the Right to Shelter policy as the city struggles to find room for the 110,000 asylum seekers that have arrived since the Spring of 2022.

In May he made major changes to the 40-year-old ‘Right to Shelter’ law that guarantees a bed for anyone who needs it in the city as his government asked for federal and state help to deal with the surge of migrants that he now says could destroy New York as we know it.

With Executive Order 402, Adams suspended aspects of the law, meaning the city no longer had to provide migrant families with their own room and could direct them to a communal shelter instead.

In July, he told migrants the city was out of room and that it would distribute flyers at the US-Mexico border telling newly arrived migrants to ‘consider another city.’

Herekert has also invited Adams to witness the situation of the neighborhood and see that ‘they made a mistake here’. 

Adams’s shift in attitude comes as a surprise to many, since he promised while campaigning that NYC would remain a sanctuary city under an Adams administration, saying in 2021, ‘We should protect our immigrants. Period.’

Back in August 2022, Adams went to Port Authority to welcome a bus full of asylum seekers sent from Texas by Republican governor Gregg Abbot, who argued progressive cities should also bare the costs of the influx of asylum seekers crossing the southern border.

Speaking to reporters at the time, Adams said: ‘As the mayor of New York, I have to provide services families that are here, and that’s what we’re going to do – our responsibility as a city, and I’m proud that this is a Right to Shelter state, and we’re going continue to do that.’

But the buses never stopped coming in and has now left New York in a state of despair and collapse. 

Despite Adams’s warning, the city still has a legal obligation to give shelter to those who ask for it forcing the administration to turn  a variety of city landmarks into makeshift shelters and temporary housing as short-term solutions, including the St. John Villa Academy.

More than 110,000 asylum seekers have arrived in the city since the Spring of 2022, with over currently 10,000 arriving every month, and about 1,000 every single day. 

There are now nearly 60,000 migrants in the city’s care, with about 21,000 new migrant children starting school this year. As the school year kicked off on September 7, some schools were forced to turn away students as the classrooms overflowed.

The migrant crisis has plagued Adams’ time as mayor since he took office in January 2022 and if continues, it could cost the city more than $4billion this fiscal year. 

City officials have said they expect the number asylum seeker population to reach nearly 33,980 households this fiscal year. According to Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine, asylum seekers are costing the city roughly $10 million every day.

While officials have not revealed how many hotel rooms have been designated for migrants, hotel industry experts believe it’s as many as 10,000. 

The Roosevelt Hotel, Paul Hotel and Paramount Hotel are among the hotels designated for housing migrants in Manhattan. Long lines of migrants, mostly men from Africa, are now often seen outside the storied locations.

Women and children are being prioritized and they have said they are mostly fed pasta and salad, without many appropriate options for young children, as reported by CBS News.

New York officials have been sounding the alarm for months over their inability to right the ship, with Adams cautioning that his office estimates the issue will cost the city in the region of $12 billion in just three years.

He declared a state of emergency in the fall and has repeatedly labelled the deluge a ‘humanitarian crisis’. The mayor’s failed requests for more federal funding led him to condemn President Biden in April for ‘failing’ the city.

The crisis is also far from contained to New York, as numerous major metros have also struggled with housing asylum seekers. In Chicago, residents were stunned to find a police precinct had been turned into a shelter in May.

The problems at the southern border were significantly escalated when Title 42, a pandemic-era border policy that gave officials advanced powers to detain people, ended in May.

The day the policy expired on May 12, the number of illegal border crossings topped 10,000 – a figure that was maintained for several days