Mayor Eric Adams is ending his administration’s controversial program supplying migrants in city shelters with prepaid debit cards to pay for groceries.
The pilot program distributed the preloaded Mastercards to asylum seekers at hotels-turned-shelters with a family of four receiving about $350 a week to cover the cost of groceries and baby supplies.
The city hired New Jersey-based tech startup, Mobility Capital Finance, in a $53 million one-year “emergency” contract that drew backlash when the city failed to conduct a typical bidding process before picking the company.
But with the one year up shortly, the Adams administration decided against renewing the contract, ABC7 reported.
“As we move towards more competitive contracting for asylum seeker programs, we have chosen not to renew the emergency contract for this pilot program once the one-year term concludes,” Adams’s Office said in a statement to the station.
The city launched the program in late March after inking the contract two months earlier. Since then, the city has handed out $3.2 million in prepaid debit cards to some 2,600 migrant families for food, according to ABC7.
The program was meant to both trim costs and reduce food waste associated with the city’s boxed-meal delivery service program. City officials said a lot of the food in the boxed meals was tossed out while allowing migrants to pick and choose what they wanted to eat cut back on waste.
The Adams administration said the no-bid emergency contract was awarded to avoid delays in rolling out the cost-saving program.
City Comptroller Brad Lander has since revoked the city’s ability to award such deals for migrant services.
The Adams administration did not provide a reason on Thursday for cutting the program.
A spokesperson for the mayor did not immediately respond to a request for comment.