CHEEKTOWAGA, N.Y. (WKBW) — The Cheektowaga Town Board approved a resolution that authorizes the town attorney to take action if the two local hotels used to house asylum seekers in Cheektowaga aren't vacated by December 31.
The resolution was sponsored by all six current members of the Cheektowaga Town Board and was approved on Tuesday.
"The reason we had every single board member on this is one of those situations if for whatever reason it may be, we all see the need to make sure the court order that we reached last year is honored, and we get to the first of the year and hotels go back to the use they were intended for," said Cheektowaga Town Supervisor Brian Nowak.
Supervisor Nowak added that for him the resolution is about the enforcement of zoning law.
"Moving on from having them in hotels is one thing, but saying we want to send you back to Mexico or Venezuela or whatever, that's a whole different story," said Supervisor Nowak. "These folks have a right to an asylum hearing and some of these folks will be granted asylum and there are already productive members of the community that are living in these buildings. Moving on from our hotels being used as encampments or shelters, yes, but not to say we don't want migrants or immigrants as part of our society."
Asylum seekers have been housed at two Cheektowaga hotels since June of 2023. In October, 7 News reported that Erie County had mandated any asylum seeker living in a local hotel to vacate those properties by the end of 2024.
Also on Tuesday, New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced that 25 shelters and hotels currently housing asylum seekers across New York State would close "over the next two months." Western New York hotels on the list were the Red Roof Inn Plus in Amherst, the Best Western Inn, and the Quality Inn in Cheektowaga.
The Office of New York City Mayor Eric Adams tells 7 News that Western New York hotels housing asylum seekers will be vacated on the following dates:
Best Western Inn, Cheektowaga - December 16th
Quality Inn, Cheektowaga - December 18th
A spokesperson for Mayor Adams added the following statement on the closure of migrant shelters and hotels across New York State:
"“We’ve come a long way since the first buses from Texas arrived in our city over two years ago, when we were working around the clock to care for the thousands of people who were arriving every week. Now, thanks to our resettlement efforts, intensive case management, and national-leading Asylum Application Help Center, more than 170,000 migrants have left our shelter system and taken their next steps towards self-sufficiency. And thanks to our advocacy efforts on the federal level and executive orders issued by the Biden-Harris administration, we continue to see a decline in the number of people entering our shelter system every week. We are seeing real results from our hard work, including the ability to continue consolidating operations. We closed 11 New York City emergency shelters last month, all of our upstate emergency shelters will close by December, and our Randall’s Island and Floyd Bennett Field shelters are set to close early next year. We continue to look closely at all of our shelters and will make all determinations based on what’s best for our city and those in our care.”
