A guest who was displaced last week when a Super 8 motel in upstate N.Y. kicked out guests to make room for migrants says she was not offered any financial or logistical help with finding another hotel, despite New York City mayor Eric Adams’s office claiming effected guests were offered free “extended stay” lodging at another hotel nearby.

Dana Kelsall told National Review she was visiting Rotterdam from nearby Broome County last week and had booked a two-night stay at the Super 8. When she arrived on the first day of her stay, the front desk told her they would not be able to honor her two-night reservation and that she would have to be out of the hotel by 11 a.m. the next day.

"They wouldn't give us any explanation, I didn't know why they were closing until I actually watched the newscast that evening," when she learned the motel had been closed to make room for migrants who were being bused in from New York City, she said.

She said she asked the Super 8 to book her in a room of equal value, as the mayor's office said, but she was told there was nothing they could do.

"They wouldn't call around and try to find another room for us," she said. "They didn’t even offer another Super 8 or anything. It was just 'too bad, so sad.'”

Kelsall said she asked if she could have a late check-out the next day to make the transition between her Super 8 room and her new hotel room more seamless. She was given until noon and told that every additional hour after that would cost her an extra $10.

She said the motel is now supposed to refund her for the second night of her reservation, though she has not received her money back yet.

"I had to pay out of pocket for another room and pay another deposit," she said. "And the hotel — I picked it because it was right down the road from my fiance's hotel, because he works in the area. So it was convenient, but the other one was across town.”

“None of it was convenient. But what bothered me more was their lack of empathy or explanation,” she said, adding that it was also disheartening to see the mayor’s office claiming that displaced guests had been offered new accommodations when that was not her experience.

Adams's office previously told the Albany Times-Union that displaced guests were offered free "extended stay" lodging at another hotel nearby.

"Guests at that hotel were all offered to be relocated and booked for an extended stay at a comparable hotel in the same area free of charge," Adams's office said in a statement. "All but one reservation took our contractor up on that offer and instead preferred to be re-booked at the comparable hotel on a daily basis, which we facilitated."

National Review has reached out to Adams’s office for comment.

Kelsall said when she checked out of the motel she noticed long-term guests standing around with all of their belongings and nowhere to go.

While the Super 8 at times houses people who receive assistance from Schenectady County Department of Social Services, Schenectady County's county manager Rory Fluman said none of these people were living at the motel when guests were displaced last week. However, the motel was housing individuals who receive assistance from the Department of Social Services in Montgomery County, which neighbors Schenectady.

Fluman said the county was not expecting to receive migrants from the city and that most of the hotels in the county are already at capacity.

"We're being told they are all asylum-seekers," Fluman said Wednesday. The report indicated migrants self-identified as being from Peru, Venezuela and Colombia.

Fluman said he expects the migrants will ultimately seek help from the county's social services system after the city's help runs out. The city has offered to pay for migrant housing for anywhere from a month to a year.

Representative Paul Tonko (D., N.Y.), whose district includes Rotterdam, said in a statement shared with National Review that it is "never acceptable to kick families and long-term residents to the curb with mere hours' notice."

"The callousness shown towards these individuals by Mayor Adams and the motel is beyond belief," Tonko said. "This is not about migrants — it's about basic human decency and respect."

"That we were only informed of these actions by the Mayor's office after the fact makes these actions even more egregious," he added. "We were assured communication, collaboration, and support to our communities throughout this process of relocating migrants. So far, that promise has been blatantly ignored."

New York State assemblyman Angelo Santabarbara and Schenectady County Legislature chair Anthony Jasenski have called on New York state attorney general Leticia James to investigate the situation.

"The motel was regularly used by Departments of Social Services to house people in those programs," Jasenski said.

"This after residents were told they had to evacuate the Motel by 11:00 a.m. on July 18 because the motel was closing, only to see 2 busloads of migrants move in,” Jasenski told WNYT. “It's clear that motel management threw out their occupants in order to cash in on a lucrative contract with New York City.”

“Not only did they lie about closing the motel, it appears that they also failed to provide them with proper notice before they threw them out to make rooms available for asylum seekers from the city, at a higher room rate,” he added.

The Schenectady County Attorney's Office sent a letter to Jasenski that suggests "it appears that the motel owner likely violated provisions of the New York State Real Property Law and/or New York State Real Property Actions and Proceedings Law."