NYC booting adult migrants from Manhattan hotels, moving them to Randalls Island to make room for families: source
Mayor Eric Adams’ administration started Wednesday to boot hundreds of single adult migrants from Manhattan hotels and residence halls to make room for asylum-seeking families with children amid a shortage of shelter space, according to a city government official directly familiar with the matter.
The adult migrants getting moved out are being transported to the administration’s new tent-style mega shelter on Randalls Island, which has capacity for 2,000 people, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity as he wasn’t authorized to discuss the matter with the press.
The source, who was posted Wednesday morning outside one of the move-out facilities, the Stratford Arms dormitory on the Upper West Side, told the Daily News that NYPD officers were on site as migrants were taken on buses to Randalls. As of noon Wednesday, two busloads of migrants had been transported from the Stratford to Randalls, according to the source.
The other three migrant shelter sites where adults were being moved out are the Amsterdam dormitory, also on the Upper West Side, the Wolcott Hotel in Midtown and a downtown Manhattan Holiday Inn.
It was not clear how many adults are set to be moved out in total. The source said the busing initiative is expected to continue through Friday, and that migrant families should be able to start moving into the four sites by next week.
The shelter shakeup is happening because the city’s quickly running out of shelter space designated for families with children, as hundreds more migrants continue to arrive every day, according to the source.
Spokespeople for Adams’ office did not immediately return a request for comment.
The move-outs come on the heels of Adams and his advisers making clear they want to reserve hotels and other housing facilities with individual rooms for migrant families with kids, while using congregate-style settings like the Randalls tents to accommodate single adults.
Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services Anne Williams-Isom was expected to hold a migrant crisis briefing at City Hall on Wednesday afternoon. According to an advisory, Williams-Isom will make an announcement at the briefing about Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Centers, or HERRCs, the administration’s preferred term for large-scale migrant shelters.
According to the latest City Hall data, Adams’ administration continues to house and provide services for more than 60,000 migrants, most of them Latin Americans, costing the city tens of millions of dollars every week. The latest cost projection provided by Adams’ budget team estimates the city is on track to spend as much as $12 billion on the migrant crisis by summer 2025.
The mayor has repeatedly said he needs a lot more financial and logistical assistance from the administrations of President Joe Biden and Gov. Kathy Hochul, warning that the city could otherwise plummet into a fiscal collapse.
