A record 100,000 people in New York homeless shelters
New York City passed an unfortunate milestone this week, spurred by an influx of migrants from the country’s southern border: More than 100,000 people are now trapped here in homeless shelters for the first time, city officials said Wednesday.
Days earlier, the city said the number of migrants in reception centers had passed 50,000 and for the first time formed the majority of people in homeless shelters in the city.
The city, led by Mayor Eric Adams, has spent more than a billion dollars to house the migrants since they arrived in droves in the spring of 2022. It expects to spend more than $4 billion next year.
City officials took the opportunity to ask the state and federal governments for help: help find temporary housing for out-of-town migrants; help feed and house those who are here; assistance in obtaining work permits; help finding lawyers or even interested non-lawyers help with their asylum application.
“If this were coordinated at the national level,” Deputy Mayor Anne Williams-Isom said during her weekly press briefing on the crisis, “the burden wouldn’t be so much on New York City.”
She said 2,500 asylum seekers had entered reception centers in the past week alone. Of the 50,000 now in shelters, more than two-thirds are families with children.
At the same time, the city’s non-migrant homeless population may also be growing. When Mr. Adams took office, there were 45,000 people in the city’s main shelter system. Now there are more than 81,000, and while the city did not provide detailed escapes, the number of non-migrants in the system appears to be approaching 50,000. (At least 17,000 migrants are in facilities outside the main reception system, the city says, including large hotels and other venues set up specifically to house them.)
In total, about 1 in 80 people in the country’s largest city have no permanent place to live.
The migrants are now housed in more than 150 locations, including hotels, regular shelters, massive “emergency centers” and “respite centers” the government revealed last week do not have showers on site.
Time and time again they have tested the city’s reputation as a place that welcomes immigrants.
Last month, after the passage of a national immigration policy that allowed authorities to expel many migrants at the border, their numbers increased, prompting the city to seek legal help for its unique court-mandated mandate to provide a shelter bed. offer to anyone who wants one.
Ms. Williams-Isom was asked at the briefing if the city expected another surge in immigrants. Her answer made a beleaguered, desperate tone.
“We are still in the middle of this wave,” she said. “And so, is it getting more, is it getting less? I have no idea because we just deal with it in terms of what comes to the front door and we do our best when people come to the front door.”
“I know we’re at a breaking point,” she added, “and my heart breaks when I see kids come to our arrival center and sit there and be exhausted and amazed and hope we have enough room for them.”