As many as 2,000 migrants to be housed in tent shelter on Randalls Island soccer fields, NYC Mayor Adams says

NEW YORK —Mayor Eric Adams announced Monday that his administration is opening a new migrant shelter on Randalls Island with capacity for 2,000 adults — one of the largest emergency housing facilities the city has erected since the asylum crisis started last year.

The price-tag for the sprawling tent facility was not immediately known, but the mayor said in a written statement that Gov. Hochul’s administration will reimburse the city for building, maintaining and staffing it.

“We need more of the same from all levels of government,” Adams said of Hochul’s help. “We will continue to work with the governor and elected officials across the state to address this crisis as New York City continues to do more than any other level of government.”

The assistance from Hochul comes on the heels of Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Erika Edwards reprimanding lawyers for the state in court on Friday over what she described as the governor’s administration doing little to help the city accommodate the tens of thousands of mostly Latin American migrants who have arrived since last year.

As first reported by the Daily News last week, the new Randalls site will be built across Fields 82, 83, 84 and 85 on the island’s southern tip.

Those fields are primarily used for soccer, including by hundreds of students from a number of New York City public and private schools.

After word first emerged of the Adams administration’s push to house migrants on Randalls, several soccer coaches and local community leaders voiced outrage over the plan, arguing it’d deprive New York City kids of recreation. According to the Randall’s Island Park Alliance, more than 3,000 permit hours of recreation will need to be canceled this year alone due to the migrant shelter plans.

On Monday afternoon, Martin Jacobson, a soccer coach at Manhattan’s MLK High School, said he had already received notice that permits are being withdrawn for multiple games his team was supposed to play on the soon-to-be-occupied fields in September and October.

“I’m outraged by it,” Jacobson told The News. “What about the cost to our youth? It’s great that the state is reimbursing the city, but are they going to reimburse the time lost for our children?”

He added: “What are they going to do now? Cancel all our games? This is horrible.”

An Adams spokeswoman acknowledged that the shelter is going to force the cancelation of soccer games. But she said Adams’ office is “coordinating with the Parks Department, the Department of Education and the Randall’s Island Park Alliance to minimize the number of permit hours canceled.”

The Randalls site won’t officially open for another “few weeks” due to construction, the spokeswoman added. Once up and running, the facility will only house single adult migrants.

The facility is expected to resemble the since-disassembled mega migrant tent the city operated in the parking lot of Randalls’ Icahn Stadium for a few weeks last year before shutting it down after it stood mostly empty, according to City Hall.

In addition to offering sleeping quarters for some 2,000 adults, “a range of services” will be available at the new Randalls shelter.

If it reaches capacity, the Randalls site is going to be among the largest occupied shelters in the city. Only two other shelters — The Hall, an emergency migrant housing facility operated in Brooklyn’s Navy Yard, and the Row Hotel, which is being used to accommodate migrant families — are believed to be larger.

Monday’s announcement from Adams comes as the number of migrants sleeping in city shelters tops around 57,000, according to data from the mayor’s office. In total, more than 107,000 people are staying in city shelters, an all-time high.

The overcrowding reached a breaking point last weekend when dozens of migrants resorted to sleeping on the sidewalk outside the Roosevelt Hotel, which doubles as the Adams administration’s intake center in Manhattan after being told there was no more room in the shelter system.

In his statement, Adams reiterated that he believes President Biden’s administration must do more to help address the city’s migrant crisis.

“As the number of asylum seekers in our care continues to grow by hundreds every day, stretching our system to its breaking point and beyond, it has become more and more of a Herculean effort to find enough beds every night,” the mayor said.

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