New York City officials are moving ahead with a contentious plan to give migrant families debit cards for food and baby supplies, with the first cards being distributed on Monday to a small handful of new arrivals.
The program has faced a backlash over concerns about potential fraud or abuse, and about whether migrants were being given preferential treatment over other people in need.
But with 180,000 migrants having entered New York over the last two years and 65,000 still in shelters, the city is struggling with mounting housing and food costs and the administration of Mayor Eric Adams is eager to try a new approach.
A family of four is expected to receive up to $350 per week under the program, which will last six weeks, city officials said. The program will begin with 10 families on Monday, expanding to about 115 families, or roughly 450 people, over the next week.
Mayor Adams, a Democrat, has repeatedly defended the program, arguing that it will bring down the costs of feeding migrants, put money back into local businesses and help the city avoid wasting uneaten meals.
The city’s deputy mayor for health and human services, Anne Williams-Isom, said in an interview on Monday that she did not understand the outcry over allowing a group of vulnerable people to buy their own food, noting that other programs like cash assistance and food stamps are available to New Yorkers who are not migrants.
“I do struggle with why people are being so negative when it comes to providing something so basic for families with children,” she said, adding: “It’s not putting groups against each other.”
The cards will be distributed at the city’s arrival center, the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan, to migrant families who are staying at hotels that are being used as emergency shelters under a 28-day voucher program. City officials said the cards would be loaded with one week of funds at a time, and that their use would be monitored before the program was expanded to more families.
Joseph Borelli, the City Council’s Republican minority leader, acknowledged that offering debit cards might be cheaper than providing boxed meals, but he said the city was still spending too much money on migrant services.
“A lot of New Yorkers are going to take this as something that’s fundamentally unfair,” he said. “There are plenty of New Yorkers struggling to pay their bills.”
The most vehement criticism of the program has come from conservative leaders and commentators, including on Fox News, where Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas said the idea was “insanity” at a time when migrants were being accused of committing crimes.
Questions have also been raised about the contract to provide the cards, which was awarded on an emergency basis to Mobility Capital Finance without competitive bids from other companies. The Adams administration has been faulted for entering into a no-bid, $432 million contract with DocGo, a medical services company whose work on the migrant crisis has been marred by scandal.
The cost of the contract with Mobility Capital Finance, a company known as MoCaFi that focuses on providing financial services to low-income communities, could rise to as much as $53 million, with about $2 million possibly going to MoCaFi and the rest being distributed to families, city officials said. The city has spent about $570,000 on the contract so far, including a $125,000 starting fee for the company, advance funds to be placed on cards and $3 per card to create them.
The company’s chief executive, Wole Coaxum, said that MoCaFi had worked on universal basic income cards in other cities, including Los Angeles and Newark, N.J., and that they were not abused.
“What we’ve found in each of these instances is that people spend the money on the intended purpose,” he said in an interview.
Mr. Coaxum said that digital coding in the cards ensures that they will work only at supermarkets and bodegas. Participants must also sign an affidavit saying they will use them only for food and baby supplies or risk removal from the program, and the families are being asked to save their receipts.
The city has the ability to remove money from the cards or to permanently turn off a card, Mr. Coaxum said, and the city is working with supermarkets and bodegas to make the rules clear.
The city intends to collect feedback before expanding the program. Ms. Williams-Isom said officials would examine whether the program is meeting its goals.
“We’ll be looking at where they’re actually being used, what the card is being used for and feedback from migrants themselves to see whether this is something that is worthwhile,” she said.
