New York City is approaching a breaking point as it tries to metabolize the tens of thousands of illegal migrants who have streamed into the city over the past year. Since April of last year, more than 90,000 migrants have arrived in New York City. As of this month, about 55,000 are still being housed on the city’s dime, causing New York’s homeless shelters to burst at the seams. Combined with the city’s large homeless population, the city is now sheltering a record 105,800 people.
New York City has already poured $1.2 billion into helping the migrants since last summer.
Mayor Eric Adams said earlier this month that New York is seeing about 2,500 asylum seekers arriving every week, a “silent crisis” for the city. Even more than that estimate, about 2,800 new migrants arrived in the week ending July 16.
The crisis appears to have flustered Adams, who has blamed everyone from Texas, the White House, and New York’s state government for sticking the city with the emergency.
“The president and the White House have failed New York City on this issue,” Adams said in April, mentioning President Biden by name.
In May, Adams accused Texas Governor Greg Abbott of targeting “black mayors” by sending migrants to their cities specifically. However, the 7,900 migrants Texas has bused to New York are only a tiny portion of the migrants arriving in the city.
“It’s going to get worse before it gets better if we don’t get help from the national government,” Adams said Monday.
This month, New York City started sending flyers to the southern border warning migrants that there is “no guarantee” of shelter if they come to New York and encouraging them to pick a different city.
“There is no guarantee we will be able to provide shelter and services to new arrivals,” reads the bright yellow flyer, which is also available in Spanish. “Housing in NYC is very expensive. The cost of food, transportation, and other necessities in NYC is the highest in the United States. Please consider another city as you make your decision about where to settle in the U.S.”
New York has opened more than 188 new shelter sites to house migrants, but the city is still struggling.
“Our compassion is infinite. Our space is not,” said Dr. Ted Long, senior vice president at NYC Health + Hospitals, the agency in charge of much of the emergency housing for migrants.
On Monday, the city said it is now seeking private contractors to build new emergency long-term shelters. However, the new large-scale shelters will not be ready for weeks since bidders have until mid-August to submit proposals, and year-long contracts to run the shelters would not begin until November.
Migrants are causing other headaches for the city besides overcrowding the emergency shelter system — some have caused public disturbances.
Just this week, migrants outside a shelter in Harlem allegedly started throwing objects at pedestrians and punched and kicked two New Yorkers who intervened, pushing one man through a glass door and sending both to the hospital.
Business owners in Manhattan say their businesses are suffering significantly due to the chaos spilling out of the migrant shelters and onto the streets.
Outside the swanky art-deco Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown, which was turned into a migrant shelter in May, migrants have been photographed sitting on the busy sidewalk during the day, lounging in chairs to smoke and eat, sometimes in front of store entrances, and leaving business owners to clean up their mess. Some migrants try to sell pedestrians everything from clothes to snacks, and families sprawl out onto the sidewalk, children riding their scooters up and down the street in front of the businesses.
Some migrants also reportedly spend time drinking and doing drugs as well. Even children at Row NYC, another swanky Midtown hotel-turned-shelter have reportedly been spotted intoxicated.
In Brooklyn, some migrants who were kicked out of shelters for brawling set up a mini tent city under a highway. Some businesses in that area have hired private security to stop migrants from coming into their stores.
Other Democrat-run major cities are also dealing with a flood of migrants as southern border states get fed up with dealing the illegal immigration crisis on their own.
From Texas alone, Washington, D.C. has taken in 9,700 migrants, Chicago has received 2,300 migrants, and Philadelphia has received 1,500 migrants. Smaller cities are also starting to see migrants arriving. Denver has seen more than 160 migrants arrive since May.
Poster Comment:
Some of those buses from Texas were sent by the Democrats who run El Paso.