The Adams administration has dropped a controversial plan to house migrants at a former Catholic school on Staten Island.
City lawyers announced in court on Thursday that the administration is dropping its fight to use the former St. John Villa Academy to house migrants, a month after the FDNY declared the building a fire hazard and temporarily shuttered a shelter for asylum seekers that opened in August to the ire of local residents, sources told The Post.
“We are pleased that the curtains have finally closed, and will remain closed, on the St. John Villa migrant shelter,” Borough President Vito Fossella said. “As a result of our legal efforts,… the city stipulated that it would never use the site as a migrant shelter again.
“This is the final nail in the coffin for the Villa shelter.”
Fossella and a slew of other Republican lawmakers – including Councilmen Joseph Borelli and David Carr – joined longtime Staten Island homeowner Scott Kerkert in suing the city in August to block to some 300 migrants from moving into the shuttered school — claiming outdoor showers running on generators 24 hours a day will pose a “nuisance.”
Wayne Ozzi, a Staten Island Supreme Court judge, issued a preliminary injunction Sept. 26 ordering the city to stop using the site – while blasting the Big Apple’s “Right to Shelter” law as a “relic from the past.”
Some 200 asylum seekers were then packed onto buses and taken to the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan, leading to celebration among Staten Islanders who staged protests for weeks over the use of the facility.
The Adams administration had notified the court it intended to appeal the decision, but then the FDNY declared the building a hazard. The judge on Thursday accepted the administration’s motion to dismiss the suit because it no longer plans to use the site to house migrants.
The Staten Island Advance first reported that the city was dropping the school scheme.
