Make your contribution now and help Gothamist thrive in 2023.A Florida-based company has been awarded an $18 million no-bid contract to provide emergency shower trailers for New York’s asylum seekers, a development that followsfrom immigrant rights activists and elected officials about the absence of showers at shelters housing migrants.
Mariel Acosta, a volunteer who has been assisting asylum seekers at a city respite center located at 359 Stockton St. in Bushwick, said a shower trailer has been in operation outside that site, but that shower trailers located at Hall Street in Brooklyn and at a hangar near John F. Kennedy International Airport are unreliable and that only five or six showers out of 34 at the latter location were open at the end of July.
Imperial Restrooms provides toilets and showers across the country, including for weddings, construction sites and emergency sites. The company, which formed in 2008, also caters to the film industry in New York.