The medical services company with a nearly half-billion-dollar contract to feed, house and care for thousands of migrants in New York City overcharged the city by millions for vacant hotel rooms and security guards, according to an audit released Tuesday by NYC Comptroller Brad Lander.
The audit found that 80% of the $13.8 million paid to the company, DocGo, during May and June 2023 should be recouped by the city. Among the wasted funds, the report concluded, is $1.7 million in nearly 10,000 unused hotel room nights during that time period and unauthorized security services that were overpaid to the tune of $2 million.
“It really is atrocious mismanagement,” Lander said, slamming Mayor Adams’ choice to contract with the company at a Hell’s Kitchen press conference.
Lander, who announced his mayoral run last week, stated Tuesday that the audit wasn’t a political move, but fell under his duty as the city’s fiscal watchdog — but his audit drew a sharp rebuke from the mayor’s team.
“It’s very comfortable to sit in the bleachers and, you know, just be a detached spectator, but when you are running a city as complex as this, you have to be prepared, and that’s what this team did and was able to do,” Adams said of Lander on Tuesday.
The audit found DocGo-run shelters didn’t staff enough caseworkers and social workers at hotels, as mandated by their contract with the city. In a survey of over 200 asylum seekers, 25% said they weren’t aware that they could enroll their children in school and 41% said they were unhappy with the food they were provided.
“The audit reveals in excruciating detail that the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development failed to conduct sufficient oversight of the contract — in a way that is costing taxpayers millions of dollars,” Lander said.
In September 2023, when the $432 million contract was submitted to the Comptroller’s Office, Lander denied it — citing multiple concerns including DocGo’s experience in providing emergency housing, a lack of clarity about where all the money was going and vendor selection and responsibility. Mayor Adams moved forward with the contract despite Lander’s objections, and Lander announced the audit shortly after.
At a City Hall press briefing later on Tuesday, Adams said the fact that his administration booked up what turned out to be too many hotel rooms was a matter of being prepared for the ongoing influx of migrants to the city.
“When you got called in the middle of the night, ‘You need 200 rooms, you know, a bus pulled in, you need 150 rooms, you need 300 rooms’ — you don’t have time to call Motel Six, you better be prepared and that’s what this team did,” he said.
Liz Garcia, a spokesperson for the mayor, slammed the audit as outdated and wrong.
“The comptroller can nitpick the first two months of an emergency contract over a year after the fact and long after new safeguards were put in place, but he cannot claim to have saved a single migrant family from sleeping on the streets,” she said in a statement. “We will continue to pay our partners for the work they do on behalf of the city, particularly amidst a humanitarian crisis.”
New York City has been at the center of a migrant crisis since 2022 when a surge in asylum seekers arriving from the southern border began to overwhelm the city’s shelter system. The city has opened more than 200 emergency shelters and spent over $4 billion in migrant services over the past two years.
There are currently around 65,000 migrants living in city shelters across the city.
“HPD staff and its vendors worked around the clock, seven days a week, to make sure that the thousands of people suddenly on the city’s doorstep were safe, sheltered, and fed,” said Ilana Maier, a spokesperson for the department. “When HPD made decisions quickly, it made them compassionately; and when procedures didn’t yet exist and documentation wasn’t available in the moment, HPD exercised good judgment rather than risking lives for bureaucratic steps.”
DocGo’s contract in the city ended in May, and services are being handed over to a different company with an already existing contract with the city. The company did not respond to a request for comment.
With Chris Sommerfeldt
