More than 95,000 immigrants have arrived in New York City since last spring. Now, the city is so overwhelmed that the mayor’s office is considering housing them in Central Park and Brooklyn’s Prospect Park.
The city is required by law to provide shelter to anyone who asks, but Mayor Eric Adams said it has run out of space.
The deputy mayor for Health and Human Services said the city cannot continue to absorb tens of thousands of newcomers on its own without more help from the state and the federal government.
“People on the one hand cannot accuse us of not having enough space, of telling us not to go to certain places, and then on the other hand, tell us, ‘Well, you can’t go here and you can’t go there.’ We are making the best decisions that we can given the information that we get,” Deputy Mayor Anne Williams-Isom said. “If we could get a decompression strategy where the amount of people coming through the front door would slow down, I think that we would be able to manage this much better. But right now everything is on the table.”
Because there’s no more room in shelters and hotels, large groups have started sleeping on the sidewalk outside the Roosevelt Hotel. Advocate groups are accusing the city of using those long lines to pressure state and federal officials to send them more money.
“Mayor Adams should not be using asylum seekers as props to get the attention of the Biden administration or discourage asylum seekers from coming to New York,” Murad Awawdeh, executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition, said.
The deputy mayor responded by saying the city has executed a strong plan with compassion.
“I don’t think I or any person in this administration would use people to do any type of a stunt,” Williams-Isom said.
But Awawdeh said it’s hard to imagine there aren’t enough beds for everyone.
