NYC housing more asylum seekers than homeless NYers in migrant crisis first

A new milestone in NYC's migrant crisis: There are now more asylum seekers living in city shelters than there are homeless New Yorkers.

The tipping point took place Sunday, when 50,000 migrants were in the City's care, outnumbering the 49,700 local shelter residents.

Among the takeaways: the NYC shelter system has essentially doubled in size, due to the influx, mostly from Latin American countries including Venezuela, Ecuador and Colombia.

Additionally, sheltering asylum seekers is more expensive. Without work permits, many asylum seekers cannot pay for basic necessities. They are not entitled to all the same public assistance benefits as citizens, and for migrants, the city is not collecting its usual share of shelter costs from the state and federal governments.

"My heart breaks a little bit, and I have these conflicting feelings," said Deputy Mayor Anne Williams-Isom, during a tour of the new arrival center at the Roosevelt Hotel.  

Of the milestone, she says it's important for the city to greet people with dignity, but unsustainable at this pace.

Williams-Isom notes the financial cost, an anticipated $4.3 billion cost through next spring, and a human cost on staff assisting asylum seekers.

"They are working 12-hour shifts. We thought that we would see some relief. But there is no relief coming. There is no Calvary coming and they are just getting exhausted with the magnitude."

City officials say they are helping to reroute "a significant number" of asylum seekers to other destinations, setting aside a small percentage of rooms at the Roosevelt where migrants can stay short term while they make arrangements.

"To give you that critical period of time to enable us to get through to those friends or family members across the country, and then rebook you so you don't have to enter the City system," said Dr. Ted Long of NYC Health and Hospitals, which runs the Roosevelt arrival center and other humanitarian relief centers in the city.

The mayor's office and Dr. Long say the current daily average of incoming asylum seekers is approximately 400. They declined, however, to say how many are departing or being rerouted on a daily basis.

Since the spring of 2022, City officials say 80,000 migrants have come through the shelters, meaning approximately 30, have left.

New Yorkers reacted to news of the tipping point Monday.

"It's surprising because I feel like it's happened very quickly," said Kaitlin Hartigan of Williamsburg.  "The homeless crisis has been prevalent for a long time. They need to figure out what to do.

Veronica Nyarko, an immigrant from Ghana, said she resents the situation. "I became citizen since 1980 and I didn't come that way. I passed through the right channel. Why don't them (sic) pass through the right channel? Now we're paying for them!"

Many of the migrants stopped outside the hotel gave good reviews of 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 NYC prepares to ask a court to give them more flexibility around the right to shelter.