STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — A former Arrochar Catholic school will be open in the “coming days” as the Island’s latest migrant housing center, a City Hall spokesperson said Monday.

The spokesperson said they expect the former St. John Villa Academy, which has not been in operation in five years, to begin housing up to 300 adult migrants by the end of the week, but couldn’t offer an exact timeline.

They also couldn’t say exactly where on the sprawling campus the migrants would be housed, but said the emergency shelter wouldn’t impact the ongoing work of the School Construction Authority, which has controlled the site since the city purchased it in 2018 for $20 million from the Sisters of St. John the Baptist.

City Councilman David Carr (R-Mid-Island) said the latest city shelter on Staten Island, which officials expect to only be a short-term site for a few months, calls for more drastic action.

“This latest bad decision to open up yet another migrant shelter only serves to show how you can never have enough beds or places for the flood of folks coming,” he said. “It will never stop, and the only rational decision is simply to say ‘no more.’ Until the city finally does that, we will only end up spending more money and losing more public spaces to this crisis. The city should stop waiting for court approval and unilaterally refuse more new arrivals.”

On Saturday, a local resident, Jasmine Cira, posted a Change.org petition critical of the plan. It had garnered 766 online signatures by late Monday afternoon. Most of those signatures, 641, came Monday.

Rumors had long been circulating about the site’s possible use as a shelter for migrants, but City Hall didn’t officially confirm plans for the location at 57 Cleveland Pl. until Monday evening.

“By signing this petition, we stand together as a community to protect the educational environment of our children and ensure that St. John Villa Academy High School remains dedicated to its intended purpose,” Cira, who did not list contact information on the website, wrote in the petition’s description. “Together, let’s find alternative solutions that prioritize the well-being of both our students and those in need.”

The influx of more than 100,000 migrants since spring 2022, nearly 60,000 of whom remain in the city’s care, has prompted officials to set up emergency shelters around the five boroughs, including 13 massive humanitarian emergency relief and response centers.

On Staten Island, emergency shelters have been set up at several hotels and inside the Stapleton site of the former Richard H. Hungerford School on Tompkins Avenue. The City Hall spokesperson said Monday night that the Villa location would be similar to the Hungerford site.

Other sites around the Island have been rumored, including Villa, a Midland Beach assisted living facility, and Fort Wadsworth. All have been met with outcry and protests from locals and elected officials.

Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Monday that the federal government had arranged for migrants to be housed at Brooklyn’s Floyd Bennett Field. She said the city would set up another humanitarian emergency relief and response center with housing available for 2,000 migrants.

“After months of negotiations, the Biden Administration has provided us with a tentative contract that would allow New York to utilize Floyd Bennett Field as a shelter for asylum seekers,” she said. “Ultimately the path out of this crisis is granting work authorization immediately, so these individuals can move out of the shelter and into independent living arrangements. This site will be critical in the interim for the City of New York to provide humanitarian aid, as we work collectively to get people on the path to asylum-seeker status and legal work.”

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