Claims that New York hotels were kicking out homeless vets to make space for migrants in order to make a better profit were apparently made up by the head of a veteran nonprofit organization, the New York Post reported.
Last week, Newsweek was among the news media which covered claims made by Sharon Toney-Finch, the head of the nonprofit veteran organization Yerik Israel Toney (YIT) Foundation, that over a dozen homeless vets staying at hotels in upstate New York had been served eviction notices to make space for migrants.
Toney-Finch had suggested that the swap was financially motivated, as the hoteliers stood to make an additional profit of $100 a night on average by housing migrants instead of veterans.
These veterans were promised temporary housing for a month, Toney-Finch said. She said that 20 vets were kicked out by The Crossroads Hotel in Newburgh, and five by the Super 8 and Hampton Inn & Suites in Middletown, some 70 miles north of Manhattan. Both towns are located in New York’s Orange County.
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But now, YIT spokesperson Brian Maher, a Republican lawmaker representing a part of Orange County who had spoken to Newsweek to praise Toney-Finch’s work, accused the longtime advocate of lying. Mahler said that on Thursday, Toney-Finch, a veteran herself, admitted to him that she had made up the claims once the details of her story started unraveling.
“I asked her to give her permission to the bank to release the information. She denied authorization,” Maher told the New York Post. “After two minutes, I called her back and explained how I was feeling about not being able to see that information, and then I asked her if that was something she made up, and that’s when she really had a hard time getting the words out—this is someone who I worked with over the last three years—but she did reveal to me that this is not something that took place.”
Asked why she would lie about such a thing, Toney-Finch told Maher that she “had to help the veterans.”
The advocate’s admission follows statements by the hotels she had accused of evicting the homeless veterans denying her claims. The Crossroads Hotel in Newburgh said it never housed any veterans associated with YIT, Mid Hudson News reported.
In a statement published on Thursday, Maher said he was “devastated and disheartened upon a conversation with Sharon Toney-Finch at approximately 3:15 p.m. today, where I learned that the information regarding the YIT Foundation about homeless veterans being displaced is false. Their gross misrepresentation of the facts surrounding our homeless veterans is appalling.”
The upstate lawmaker has severed ties with the YIT and is now calling for an investigation to be launched into Toney-Finch’s behavior.
“I am calling for an immediate investigation by the New York State Attorney General’s Office and the Orange County district attorney into the YIT Foundation based on the new information that came to light today,” he said.
Newsweek reached out to the YIT Foundation via email for comment.