NYC homeless shelter population hits all-time high amid cascading migrant crisis
NEW YORK — The city’s homeless shelter population has hit an all-time high as hundreds of Latin American migrants continue to pour into New York every week as part of a crisis that’s driving the local social safety net to the brink of collapse.
The previous record — 61,415 individuals in city shelters on Jan. 12, 2019 — was first cracked over the weekend, data from the Department of Homeless Services show. On Monday, the latest day for which data is available, the tally reached 62,174.
In addition to setting a new population record, the average length of stay has also surged to all-time highs, with single adults now spending an average of 509 days in shelters, according to city data. Families with kids are, on average, in a shelter even longer — 534 days — and adult families spend 855 days in shelters on average, the data shows.
The Legal Aid Society and the Coalition for the Homeless, which serve as court-appointed watchdogs over the city’s right-to-shelter law, blamed the swelling crisis on “bureaucratic bottlenecks” at social service agencies and a drastic slowdown in affordable housing production. Mayor Eric Adams, the groups said, has not done enough to address the matter.
“Mayor Adams must commit to financing at least 6,000 apartments per year for homeless households and 6,000 apartments per year for households with extremely low incomes. We have urged the administration to take these necessary steps for months,” the groups said in a statement. “Should the city fail to act, the shelter census will only continue to rise even higher and more people will needlessly suffer homelessness.”
An Adams spokeswoman declined to comment, and referred to remarks the mayor made Friday, in which he said he expected a new shelter population record due to the migrant crisis.
As of this Monday, more than 19,000 migrants had cycled through the city homeless shelter intake system since this spring, according to data from Adams’ office. A majority of them remain in shelters, and more migrants are arriving every day.
The Daily News spotted roughly 60 Venezuelan migrants being dropped off Wednesday morning at the 30th Street intake center in Manhattan — the same location where dozens of people were forced to sleep on floors and benches last month in apparent violation of the right-to-shelter law after the city failed to provide beds for them in a timely manner.
The migrants included teenagers, and several wore clothing emblazoned with the words “Save the Children,” a humanitarian organization that assists asylum-seekers in accessing services.
Many migrants in New York were sent to the city by Republican governors, including Texas’ Greg Abbott, as part of a political stunt aimed at criticizing Democratic immigration policies.
Adams’ administration is scrambling to accommodate the migrants, and is in the process of building a controversial tent camp on Randalls Island to house some of them.
City Council members have lambasted the tent plan, and urged Adams to house migrants in vacant hotels instead.
The mayor has pushed back against the criticism and accused Council members of publicly voicing support for the migrants, but privately expressing reservations about housing them in their districts.
“Some of the loudest that are saying we need to make sure we house asylum seekers have been some of the loudest of saying not on our block,” he said Tuesday before predicting that “every community is going to see asylum-seekers” if the crisis continues at its current pace.
“So all the calls that I’m getting from elected officials, all the calls that I’m hearing from people, of saying, ‘Please not here’ — that just can’t happen,” he added.
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(Michael Gartland contributed to this report.)
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