I think in this particular case, it was to help recoup some of NYC's costs for housing the 100Ks of migrants (some undocumented, some with pending asylum cases, some with humanitarian parole work authorizations) that were being bussed from TX in 2023/24. From my understanding, because NYC has a "right-to-shelter" law, they needed to house people, and apart from building a giant tent-city, once the standard homeless shelters filled up much of the housing had to be done in hotels. I think total cost to NYC was i the $5-10B range. It's unclear what the exact "fraud" or "waste" claim is. I think people are upset because they consider some hotels in NYC "luxury". Personally, I'd suggest staying in a $200/night hotel in NYC, and then staying in, e..g, the Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise at $2k/night before concluding that the migrant hotels were "luxury".