Queens business owner housed EIGHTY SEVEN 'Senegalese migrants' in basement and charged them $300-a-month each for shelter and three meals a day, netting him $313,000 in annual rent

A Queens business owner housed 87 migrants in a basement, charging them a $300 monthly fee for shelter and food, and earning $313,000 in the process, according to police.

Officials made the shocking discovery on Monday during a building inspection after a 311 call prompted an investigation in Richmond Hills, law enforcement sources told PIX11.

The caller had complained about delivery e-bikes filling up the building's backyard, mayor Eric Adams said on Tuesday.

The owner of the business located in the building, Ebou Sarr, told PIX11 he was charging each migrant $300 a month to live there and to receive three daily meals.

That is equivalent to $26,100-a-month, or $313,000-a-year. 

'The city is saying that they have no place for these people... It’s not true,' Sarr said.

A Queens business owner housed 87 migrants in a basement, charging them a monthly fee for shelter and food, and earning $313,000 in the process

About 40 beds were found on the ground floor and in the cellar, per the FDNY

The owner of the business located in the building, Ebou Sarr, said he was charging each migrant $300 to live there and receive three daily meals

About 40 beds were found on the ground floor and in the cellar, per the FDNY. 

The migrants were transported to a migrant shelter in the Bronx and a vacate order has been issued for the building over safety concerns.

Fire officials said they eventually found that people were taking turns to sleep due to the limited number of beds. 

Deputy mayor for housing Maria Torres-Springer said: 'What we discovered last night in some ways is also symptomatic of a larger crisis that this city is facing that we’ve talked about repeatedly in terms of the housing shortage in this city.

'It is not a new thing that too many people make desperate choices about where to live and what to pay for and at the root of that is the fact that we haven’t built enough housing.'

It comes as City Hall says that migrant shelters have been filled to capacity as more asylum seekers keep arriving. Adams has set a 30-day limit for singles and 60-day limit for migrants staying at shelters, with many unable to find housing after their time runs out.

The migrants were transported to a migrant shelter in the Bronx and a vacate order has been issued for the building over safety concerns

Fire officials said they eventually found that people were taking turns to sleep due to the limited number of beds 

Meanwhile Adams is accused of wasting millions of taxpayer dollars on migrants by doling out no-bid contracts.

City Comptroller Brad Lander made the claim in an audit of migrant-related contracts released on Tuesday, identifying 340 asylum-seeker contracts representing an estimated contract value of $5.7 billion.

Most of those contracts were procured on an emergency basis, allowing the city to waive the usual competitive bidding requirements, according to the audit.

In one case, a vendor charged the city $185.63 per hour for shelter supervisors, totaling nearly $1,500 per eight-hour shift. 

The audit notes that the city's migrant crisis has been ongoing since the spring of 2022, with Adams' state of emergency declaration coming in October of that year, and questions why contracts are still being procured on an emergency basis. 

Last week, Adams announced his administration will cut an additional 10 percent in migrant spending and pause drastic budget cuts to other departments after he was slammed for giving migrants taxpayer funded debit cards.

The Big Apple has been inundated with an influx of migrants it cost taxpayers $12.65 billion in 2023, a sum that the mayor's office vows to reduce down to $10.6 billion in the fiscal year of 2025.

More than 170,000 migrants have arrived in the city since the spring of 2022, and the crisis is only deepening as they continue to be bussed from Texas where record numbers are entering.