NEW YORK (1010 WINS/WCBS 880) – New York City will open a relief center for hundreds of migrant families in a hotel near Times Square, Mayor Eric Adams announced Wednesday as he said the number of asylum seekers being sent to the city is “without an end in sight” days after he declared a state of emergency.
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The relief center will be located at The Row hotel on Eighth Avenue in Midtown and will initially serve 200 families with children. It will have the ability to serve more people in the weeks ahead.
As of this week, an estimated 18,600 migrants have been bused to the city from the U.S. southern border since April, many of them sent directly by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, both Republicans who have claimed the border is in “chaos.”
Humanitarian relief centers like the one at The Row, and another on Randall’s Island for only adults, will serve as a “first touch point” for the migrants, helping them receive initial shelter, food, medical care, case work service and various settlement options. The Randall’s Island location, which was moved from Orchard Beach in the Bronx this month due to flooding concerns, is “expected to open soon,” the mayor said.
“As the numbers of asylum seekers entering New York City continues to increase without an end in sight, the city’s family-focused Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Center will soon open to serve families with children and provide them with the care and compassion they deserve,” Adams said in a statement on the Midtown center.
With the city’s shelter system operating near capacity, Adams said this is “not an everyday homeless crisis” and that the relief centers are a “different approach” to help tackle an escalating emergency “made by human hands.”
So far the city has opened 46 hotels as emergency shelters with little to no coordination from the states sending the asylum seekers.
An average of five to six buses are arriving each day from states along the border, and the number of buses is “rapidly increasing,” the mayor has said. Last week, he declared a state of emergency, saying the city is at “the edge of the precipice” and expects to spend at least $1 billion this fiscal year alone.
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