This week, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander (D) released a report that said Mayor Eric Adams’ (D) office had “shoddy control” of a deal the city had with Rapid Reliable Testing NY LLC, also known as DocGo.
The Adams government contracted with the company for $432 million to help illegal immigrants living in the city with things like food, housing, and lodging.
“Infestation, garbage food, and bad service.”
Lander, who just started running for mayor to get Adams fired, said that an audit of the deal by a group of independent accountants showed “mismanagement.” He said the Department of Housing Prevention and Development “failed to conduct adequate monitoring,” which cost “taxpayers millions of dollars” in the end. The report said that HPD reviewed invoices in a “bad quality” way.
An in-depth look at the bills for the first two months of the contract by Lander’s office revealed that nearly 80% of the payments—$11 million out of $13.8 million made—were not justified and should be returned.
We looked at the first two months of the no-bid emergency contract and found that DocGo got $1.7 million from taxpayers to pay for almost 10,000 empty hotel rooms for illegal immigration. It gave about 67% of the money it had at the time to “unauthorized suppliers” that HPD had not checked out.
The comptroller’s report said that out of the 189 hotel rooms they checked in New York City and upstate, 80% had at least one problem, and a few of them were very dangerous to health and safety. Some of the problems or health risks were mold, water damage, bugs, and other pests, and there wasn’t a stove or fridge.
“Our thorough investigation into DocGo’s invoices and properties revealed a wide range of poor financial management and poor oversight. For instance, DocGo failed to provide the promised social and casework services, overpaid security subcontractors by $2 million, and stole over $400,000 in overhead for nearly 10,000 unused hotel rooms. “Every error demonstrates that the administration failed to thoroughly inspect the company or monitor their operations,” Lander stated.
Lander said that the room conditions and the fact that caseworkers were hard to reach were “nothing short of evil.”
There were bugs, bad food, and not enough services for the thousands of refugee seekers who came from thousands of miles away to find safety and help as they started their new lives. Lander said, “Our audit confirmed what we already knew to be true: DocGo should never have become involved in housing asylum seekers.”
The Adams administration told the New York Post that Lander and his office were “picky” during a situation that had never happened before.
The spokesperson asked workers from all over the city government to move quickly and decisively to show kindness and care for others as the international humanitarian crisis reached its peak. “We put people’s health before papers because moms needed formula for their babies and health care workers needed tools.”
“The auditor can scrutinize the first two months of an emergency contract, more than a year after the incident and long after the implementation of new safety measures, but he cannot claim to have prevented a single migrant family from sleeping on the streets,” the spokesman stated. “Despite a humanitarian crisis, we will pay our partners for city work.”
Ilana Maier, a spokeswoman for the HPD, told the Post, “The report grossly mischaracterizes HPD files and fails to address facts that don’t support their politically convenient story.”
“HPD staff and its providers worked 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to make sure that the thousands of people who came to the city all at once were safe, housed, and fed.” When HPD had to make a quick choice, it did so with kindness. And when procedures or paperwork weren’t available at the time, HPD used its best judgment instead of putting lives at risk for unnecessary paperwork, Maier said.
DocGo said that it “stands by the quality of our service,” among other things.
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