The surge is real — and it is here.
The Big Apple is quietly — and quickly — planning to open a sprawling facility in Midtown Manhattan to process and provide housing for the wave of arriving migrants, some of whom are being sent here by Texas and others by the Biden administration, The Post has learned.
Mayor Eric Adams’ Department of Homeless Services requested Thursday that the city’s non-profit shelter operators prepare and submit plans to operate the facility, which must have sufficient space to hold up to 600 households.
The charities must submit their plans to DHS by Wednesday and, if selected, they must be ready to have the facility up and operating by next Monday, Aug. 15, according to a copy of the six-page request for proposals that DHS officials transmitted last week.
“The population served by the selected vendor will be families with children, adult couples and individual adults,” officials wrote, outlining City Hall’s desperate needs.
It adds that any selected contractor must be able to provide around-the-clock support services and Spanish-speaking bilingual staffers to aid the immigrants, who are predominately coming from Central and South America via the border with Mexico.
The document adds that the agency has identified an unspecified building for the facility but adds that the nonprofits can pitch their own location, provided it remains in the neighborhood.
Providers must include proposed budgets as part of their bid and there is no suggested price tag included in the document.
The new facility would allow officials to centralize their efforts to provide services and housing to the recent arrivals, who currently are being processed and placed in shelters through the city’s current intake system for homeless New Yorkers.
Officials have estimated that thousands of migrants have made their way to New York City in recent months through a variety of means — including on airplanes, by car or bus or sometimes arriving after transiting through another city.
Most of the attention has been focused on those who were shipped up to the five boroughs from Texas with little warning by the state’s governor, Greg Abbott, a vocal critic of federal immigration policies who is under intense political pressure over unrelated issues in the state.
Hizzoner has been fiercely critical of Abbott’s move, describing it as ‘anti-American’ but also noted of the Biden administration, “It appears that individuals are being sent by the federal government.”
Representatives for City Hall and DHS did not immediately return requests for comment.
– Additional reporting by Bernadette Hogan
Read More: Mayor Adams seeks rush Manhattan shelter for border migrants