Are you surprised to learn that Upstate New York hotels have begun to kick out homeless veterans to make room for illegal aliens bused in from New York City? If so, you shouldn’t be. Many of the vets are Vietnam-era veterans who were receiving temporary shelter in the hotels through the efforts of a nonprofit agency.
Nearly two dozen homeless vets, as reported by The New York Post, including a “24-year-old man in desperate need of help after serving in Afghanistan….were told by the hotels at the beginning of the week that their temporary housing was getting pulled out from under them at the establishments and that they’d have to move on to another spot.”
The Post’s cover was classic New York Post.
Imagine that. Seriously. A struggling 24-year-old veteran of the war in Afghanistan, no less, being told by a hotel his “extended stay” was over. “Thanks for staying with us, bud — please don’t come again!”
Nearly two dozen struggling homeless vets were booted from various hotels. Sharon Toney-Finch, a disabled veteran and the CEO of the Yerik Israel Toney Foundation (YIT), told The Post. YIT was created to help raise awareness of premature births, as well as to provide aid to homeless and low-income veterans in need of living assistance.
Our veterans have been placed in another hotel due to what’s going on with the immigrants. A lot of them are Vietnam veterans. We do help them on a constant basis to get them benefits and help them find a place in society. Now we have to work from ground zero. We just lost that trust [of the vets].
Toney-Finch said the hotels made the move to expel the veterans based on money:
They get paid more [for the illegals] That’s so unfair, because at the end of the day, we are a small nonprofit, and we do pay $88 a day for a veteran to be there.
Sorry, Ms. Toney-Finch, but Mayor Eric Adams and the New York City Council not only have far more money at their disposal; they also want the illegal aliens shipped to the city by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott — whose border towns are being overrun by tens of thousands of illegals — the hell out of NYC, ASAP.
New York Republican Rep. Marc Molinaro was justifiably disgusted by the news.
This is absolutely inexcusable and should not be happening in America. This is the result of incompetence and lack of compassion. This be won’t [sic] tolerated.
The good congressman apparently doesn’t understand Democrat priorities — vets be damned.
Here are a few specifics, via The Post:
Toney-Finch said 15 of the veterans got the heave-ho from the Crossroads Hotel in Newburgh about 60 miles north of New York City in Orange County — a new epicenter of Big Apple’s migrant crisis since Mayor Eric Adams began bussing Gotham’s overflow there against local officials’ wishes.
The other five displaced veterans were split between two other local facilities — the Super 8 and Hampton Inn & Suites in Middletown, Toney-Finch said.
The Middletown hotels are not believed to have migrants yet but were reportedly on the city’s shortlist to take some.
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. The vets were about two weeks into their hotel stays when they were kicked out, according to Toney-Finch.
State Republican Assemblyman Brian Maher said it’s important that hotels know the special importance of America’s military veterans.
Shining a light on this is important because we need to make sure these hotels know how important it is to respect the service of our veterans before they kick [them] out of hotels to make room. They really ought to think about the impact on these people already going through a traumatic time.
What’s “important” and “ought to,” to some, is irrelevant and “yeah, no” to others. But Maher did make an excellent point:
Whether you agree with asylum-seekers being here or not, we can’t just ignore these veterans that are in our charge that we are supposed to protect: the New Yorkers and Americans.
Amen, Mr. Maher.
As for those who decided to kick struggling homeless vets out of temporary living arrangements in deference to people who exploited federal immigration laws — for whatever reason, be it money, politics, or both — shame on them.
As for NYC Mayor Eric Adams, add “blatant hypocrisy” to the shame that guy deserves.