Since Sunday evening, almost 200 migrants, nearly all men and all Latinos, gathered in line on the sidewalk around the Roosevelt Hotel, between the Northern and the Southern entrances from E 46th Street to E 45th Street on Vanderbilt Avenue. They have been waiting for days for places to open up. Meanwhile, they have been trying to work out a solution as best as they could, sleeping in the street on pieces of cardboard, resting their heads on book bags without leaving their place in the line.
But “there is no more room. From this moment on, it’s downhill”, as Mayor Eric Adams declared on Monday. Following his agenda, 194 sites have opened to house asylum seekers, and two more are scheduled to open in the coming weeks – both in the Queens borough – one in Creedmoor Psychiatric Facility and the other in Aqueduct Race Track. But it has not been enough.
Deputy Mayor Williams-Isom shows that “since last spring, more than 95,000 asylum seekers have arrived here. And only last week, from the 24th to the 30th of July, more than 2,300 new migrants entered our care”. The city has been struggling to keep up distributing people all around the five boroughs and even outside of the city borders. “I am proud to say that New York continues to do more than any other city in this nation”, Deputy Mayor Williams-Isom said, considering that New York is legally required to give anyone shelter who asks for it, unlike other Western American cities. But now, all the available shelters which tried to stretch their services past their capacity are full.
The Adams administration is thinking of using major public green spaces, such as Central Park, Prospect Park in Brooklyn and Randall’s Island, to set up tents and temporarily house migrants there. “But we can’t do this all alone. So, it is time for the Federal Government to take action”.
LIVE NOW: Deputy Mayor Anne Williams-Isom hosts an asylum seeker briefing at City Hall https://t.co/pHBpIWl4fK
— NYC Mayor’s Office (@NYCMayorsOffice) August 2, 2023
According to The New York Times, the Legal Aid Society, a nonprofit association committed to “defend the rights of everyday New Yorkers”, threatened to take the city back to court if the administration doesn’t do more to provide resources and aid to get people housed quickly.
