New York City is forking out an average of $387 per day to put up a single migrant household in taxpayer-funded shelters, the latest data from City Hall show.
That number — known as the “cumulative per diem” — is the average of what the city has spent to house and feed each migrant household per day every month since the start of the crisis in spring 2022.
The daily bill has slowly been dropping as the city desperately continues to try and slash asylum-seeker spending amid the ongoing crisis, with about 64,800 migrants in its care as of last week.
The $387 for February was down $5 from October 2023, when there were about 65,400 migrants in city care. The cumulative average began to go down steadily that month, hitting $391 in November, $390 in December and $388 in January.
City Hall has pegged the decline on cost-cutting measures implemented by Mayor Eric Adams’ administration to combat the crisis that’s forecast to set the Big Apple back $10 billion through next fiscal year.
“In the last two months, Mayor Adams has laid out plans to save billions of taxpayer dollars as New York City manages a national humanitarian crisis, and the numbers show that our efforts are working,” a City Hall spokesperson told The Post Tuesday, adding that “we expect to save $2.3 billion by next summer.”
Hizzoner had controversially ordered all city agencies to slash spending by an initial 5% last November — and then a further 5% in January — in response to the ever-growing costs of the migrant crisis.
Then, he abruptly called off a third wave of anticipated 5% cuts last month, citing “better-than-expected” revenue and further reductions in migrant spending.
Based on those saving measures, City Hall is now forecasting the average daily cost of sheltering an asylum seekers to come in at $386 for the 2024 fiscal year — and drop further to $352 for FY25.
“As we continue to take action now by implementing the administration’s strategy of managing the population in our care and bringing down per-diem costs, we will continue to advocate for additional support from our state and federal partners,” the City Hall rep said.
Still, the per diem migrants costs are considerably higher than what it sets the city back to house the homeless population — a fact Department of Social Services commissioner Molly Wasow Park chalked up to the hefty cost of putting asylum seekers in hotels.
“Commercial hotels are an incredibly expensive way to provide shelters,” Wasow Park told a City council budget hearing on Monday after being questioned about migrant costs.
“Our overall per diem numbers… for single adults, the average per diem is $145.13.”
The commish added: “I absolutely think we will see changes in the asylum number as there is a push to manage costs down.”
