NEW YORK — There’s a new milestone in New York City’s immigration crisis: There are now more asylum seekers living in city shelters than there are homeless New Yorkers.
The tipping point came Sunday, when 50,000 migrants were in the city’s care, outnumbering the 49,700 residents of local shelters.
Among the takeaways: New York City’s shelter system has nearly doubled in size due to the influx, primarily from Latin American countries, including Venezuela, Ecuador and Colombia.
In addition, housing asylum seekers is more expensive. Without work permits, many asylum seekers are unable to pay for their basic needs. They are not entitled to the same public assistance benefits as citizens, and for migrants, the city is not collecting its usual share of housing costs from the state and federal governments.
“My heart breaks a little bit and I have these mixed feelings,” said Deputy Mayor Anne Williams-Isom, during a tour of the new arrivals center at the Roosevelt Hotel.
About the milestone, he says it is important for the city to receive people with dignity, but that it is unsustainable at this rate.
Williams-Isom points to the financial cost, an anticipated cost of $4.3 billion through next spring, and a human cost in staff helping asylum seekers.
migrant crisis
The federal government is sending asylum seekers to New York City in hopes of a better life, but the system has left many on the streets and struggling.
“They’re working 12-hour shifts. We thought we’d see some relief. But no relief is coming. Calvary isn’t coming and they’re just getting exhausted with the magnitude.”
City officials say they are helping redirect “a significant number” of asylum seekers to other destinations, reserving a small percentage of rooms at the Roosevelt where immigrants can stay for a short time while they make arrangements.
“To give you that critical window of time that allows us to reach those friends or family across the country, and then reprogram you so you don’t have to go into the City’s system,” said Dr. Ted Long of NYC Health and Hospitals, which runs the Roosevelt arrival center and other humanitarian aid centers in the city.
The mayor’s office and Dr. Long say the current daily average of incoming asylum seekers is about 400. However, they declined to say how many leave or are redirected daily.
Since spring 2022, city officials say 80,000 migrants have passed through the shelters, meaning about 30 have left.
New Yorkers reacted to the tipping point news on Monday.
“It’s amazing because I feel like it happened so fast,” Williamsburg’s Kaitlin Hartigan said. “The homelessness crisis has been prevalent for a long time. They need to figure out what to do.
Veronica Nyarko, an immigrant from Ghana, said she is upset by the situation. “I became a citizen since 1980 and I didn’t come around. I went through the correct channel. Why don’t they (sic) go through the correct channel? Now we are paying them!”
Many of the migrants detained in front of the hotel gave good reviews about the care they have received from the city, which has not always been the case.
City officials and the Legal Aid Society are in talks as New York City prepares to ask a court to give them more flexibility on housing rights.
