Asylum Seekers Test Eric Adams
The arrival of tens of thousands of migrants has put a strain on New York City’s homeless shelters and presented an unexpected challenge to first-term Mayor Eric Adams, who thus far has relied on a series of ad hoc solutions that have produced mixed results.
As I wrote last week in The Wall Street Journal, the issues spilled onto a Manhattan sidewalk last week when migrants who had been staying in a hotel-based shelter refused to be transferred to a Brooklyn cruise terminal that city officials turned into an improvised relief center.
The incident illustrated the difficulty of assisting an estimated 44,700 migrants who have come to New York City since last spring after crossing the southern border illegally. The influx has overwhelmed the city’s network of homeless shelters and created a new fiscal burden as New York still struggles to emerge from the shock caused by Covid-19 shutdowns. The situation has also preoccupied a mayor who had expected to focus on curbing violent crime after his election in November 2021.
“We’re looking at a compounding crisis now that should have everybody very, very worried,” said Coalition for the Homeless Executive Director Dave Giffen.
A third of the nearly 71,000 people in the city’s homeless shelters are migrants, officials said, an unexpected uptick that has prompted officials to rent 83 hotels and convert them to shelters. Another 7,100 people are now in relief centers—including additional hotels and the cruise terminal that opened last week.
Mayor Eric Adams and his aides said they have “pivoted and shifted” to meet an unprecedented need. The city has looked at more than 120 sites for sheltering migrants, including armories, parks, parking lots, cruise ships and a former self-storage warehouse, Emergency Management Commissioner Zach Iscol said Monday on a city podcast. The Democratic mayor has said that all options remain on the table.
City officials said Tuesday they would soon open another relief center in the world’s tallest Holiday Inn, in lower Manhattan. A judge overseeing the 50-story hotel’s bankruptcy proceeding recently approved a 15-month contract with the city.
The city has already opened relief centers in several Midtown hotels, including the Watson, but this year turned back to the model of large congregate shelters with the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal in that borough’s Red Hook neighborhood.
Rows of cots were lined up head-to-toe in two large rooms, New York City Councilwoman Shahana Hanif said after touring the facility. The Democrat said she was shaken by the experience and called for Adams to avoid congregate shelters such as the cruise terminal. Hanif said she is introducing legislation that would bring more oversight to the relief centers, which aren’t subject to the same standards as homeless shelters.
Absorbing criticism that he wasn’t showing compassion for the migrants, the mayor slept in the Brooklyn shelter on Friday night. “We had a good conversation, had a warm place to sleep,” he said during a Monday interview on NY1.
In Chicago, residents of the Woodlawn neighborhood on this city’s South Side were angry when Wadsworth Elementary School, a long-time community center, was reopened as a shelter to house migrants.
As my colleague Joe Barrett reports, residents said the neighborhood has long been underserved by the city, and that the reopening of the school to house migrants represented another instance of the city acting against the community’s wishes. The Woodlawn neighborhood is more than 80% Black. The protests underscore the sensitive politics that cities such as Chicago and New York are having to navigate as they work to deal with the migrant surge.
“I’ve got nothing against them,” Luis Cardona, a retired tow-truck driver who helped organize Friday’s demonstration, said. “We need to help the people here that need it, and then help the other people.”
THE QUESTION: Who wrote the famous poem “The New Colossus,” associated with the Statue of Liberty?
Know the answer? Drop me a line at jimmy.vielkind@gmail.com. Or just write with thoughts, feedback or to say hi. Thanks to those (Chris) who pointed out that the Bills’ playoff run ended this year with a loss to the Bengals. I’m clearly still stung by their AFC Championship loss to the Chiefs in 2021.
THE LAST ANSWER: My favorite answers were “drink” and “wait for baseball.” But I’ve also concluded that as a New Yorker, rooting for the Eagles is immoral. I guess that means I’ll never again visit the Empire State Building ...