from WNYC studios. I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Friday, March 1st.

One of the big stories in New York City this week has been the discovery of two makeshift shelters, right? One in Queens, one in the

Bronx. You've heard this where many, many migrants from Africa have been staying, 74 beds in the

basement of a furniture store in South Richmond Hill in Queens, 45 more beds between the first

floor and the basement of another store on East Kingsbridge Road in the Fordham section of the Bronx,

where the migrants were apparently paying around $300 a month in rent to the owner,

same store owner of both places, as I understand it, an immigrant from Africa himself.

The buildings department said these were unsafe spaces for many reasons, including a

concentration of e-bikes, space heaters, hot plates, and extension cords. Now, most of the coverage

of this has been about either the illegal status of this makeshift housing or criticism of

Mayor Adams for imposing a 30-day limit for single adults

in the city's official shelters. But we want to do something a little different, consistent with

what we've been trying to do on this show through this whole asylum seeker period, not just tell

the political story and debate it, which, of course, is important to do

and we do that too, but also to humanize the humans who have been coming to New York.

What are the stories of the people going through this who the rest of us are debating?

With us now for this conversation is Amahakasa, founder and director of the group African Communities

Together, which describes itself as an organization working to help African immigrants to integrate

socially, advance economically, and engage civically. I'm told that just yesterday,

Amaha had a meeting with the mayor's office about these shelters and related issues.

He was last here in January, some of you may remember, to describe the recent African migrant

community generally, which outsiders were just beginning to realize was growing in addition

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