Migrants reject ‘bad’ sandwiches, pancakes, donuts and chicken dishes at NYC shelters By Jack Morphet , Nolan Hicks and Emily Crane
https://nypost.com/2023/12/15/metro/migrants-reject-sandwiches-chicken-dishes-at-nyc-shelters/
Several migrants confessed to The Post Friday the meals served up at New York City asylum seeker shelters are so “bad” they often just trash them — with some opting to sneakily cook in their rooms instead.
Their claims of terrible food came a day after it was revealed thousands of uneaten, taxpayer-funded meals prepared for asylum seekers are tossed each day.
“No one likes the food,” Jesus Alberto, 31, from Venezuela, told The Post outside the Roosevelt Hotel — the Big Apple’s main migrant intake center.
“Without lying, it’s bad, bad.”
Meals served to the migrants include pancakes and Quecas, a type of fried tortilla, for breakfast; sandwiches for lunch and dinners including chicken alfredo and chicken with spaghetti.
The number of meals being wasted is down, in part, to asylum seekers ditching the city-funded food in favor of buying their own.
The Post spotted several migrant families hauling groceries into the Roosevelt this week — including strollers stacked with boxes of Cheerios and Cornflakes, as well as bags filled with chips, bread and pasta.
“There is a lot of food left over because people eat in their rooms,” one migrant, Victor Herrera, 29, said.
“A lot of people get food on the street because it tastes better and there’s better variety.”
Migrant mom, Johana Roa, 23, admitted the breakfast is varied, but not to her taste.
“The breakfast they give us is very sweet. They give us pancakes, donuts and cookies for breakfast at 6am. It is too sweet to give to my daughter, so I just take a few things.”
“Nothing healthy apart from eggs and fruit, apples and oranges. No oats,” she added.
As for the rest of the meals, she added: “The food is very cold and they don’t let us heat anything. You can’t heat the food,” migrant mom, Johana Roa, 23, said.
However, she admitted to keeping a rice cooker in the Roosevelt shelter room she shares with her 2-year-old daughter daughter which they use to make meals.
“They don’t let us cook so the mothers have rice pots we cook with. We make rice and meat in the rice pot in the room,” Roa said.
“I try to cook as much as I can in our room so my daughter doesn’t eat too much food from the street. It’s not healthy.”
Fellow mom, Alexandra Salas — who has been staying at the Roosevelt for seven months — said she, too, won’t feed her kids the cold meals.
“The breakfast and lunch is so cold we can’t eat it, so it gets thrown in the trash,” she said.
“They serve sandwiches for lunch but they are freezing cold.”
It comes after internal company records obtained by the New York Times revealed one company who serves meals to migrants across the city had to trash more than 70,000 “wasted” migrant meals between October 22 and November 22.
DocGo — who do not provide food for The Roosevelt — were awarded a $432 million no-bid contract by the city to help with migrant services.
Under its hefty million dollar contract, the COVID testing-turned-migrant-shelter firm receives up to $33 per day from the city to provide three meals for each of the 4,000 asylum seekers it looks after — meaning the discarded food over that 20-day stretch would have set taxpayers back roughly $776,000.
“We take the health and safety of migrants in our care very seriously, and that includes providing them with proper nutritional meals,” a City Hall spokesperson said in response to The Post’s query about migrant complaints.
“As we continue to adjust food orders to improve quality, quantity, and respond to cultural preferences, we are dedicated to providing those in our care with enough food, while at the same time being responsible stewards of public resources.”
The city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development has claimed migrant meal consumption is currently at 93% — despite internal logs from DocGo citing high amounts of wastage.
“DocGo continually monitors food consumption and works to proactively identify opportunities for savings on behalf of NYC,” a DocGo spokesperson said.
“The cost of all meals is passed through directly to the City without any markup, and the majority of the meals are procured through nonprofits, minority- and woman-owned caterers, and other small businesses.”
Comments are closed.
