NYCHA residents and migrants spar over food, resources in Queens

Growing tensions between migrants, NYCHA residents

Tensions are growing between NYCHA tenants and newly arrived migrants over the mobile food pantries coming into the neighborhoods.

NEW YORK - The influx of migrants is being felt in one Queens neighborhood, where NYCHA tenants find themselves fighting over food with the newly arrived asylum seekers.

"We do we have to take the butt of everything," said Georgia Butler, a Queensbridge Houses resident. "This community is already suffering."

The residents living in NYCHA’s Queensbridge Houses say they look forward to mobile food pantries that show up weekly.

But over the past year, they have witnessed 8,000 migrants move into their neighborhoods and begin to make use of the limited resources available.

"They were first on line for the turkeys this morning," Butler said. "They tell you to be there at 11 o’clock. You get there at like 10:30, 10:45, but they are already out there. The line is from over there it’s over here."

Free food giveaways, especially during the holidays, have become a source of tension between long-time New Yorkers struggling to get by and newly arrived migrants who are using the system to survive.

A month ago, one altercation got so heated between a resident and a migrant, that someone ended up in the hospital.