NEW YORK (1010 WINS/WCBS 880) – City Hall is reportedly eyeing the soccer fields of Randall's Island as a place to house thousands of migrants as the city scrambles to deal with a crush of some 500 new migrants each day.
It was just last October that the city opened a $650,000 mega shelter in a parking lot of Icahn Stadium on Randall's Island—only to dismantle the “tent city” weeks later after few migrants used it because of its remote location and lack of transportation.
But as the migrant crisis has intensified in recent months, Mayor Eric Adams’ administration has been searching high and low for a place to house asylum seekers bused in from the U.S. southern border and other cities.
The effort gained new urgency this week as hundreds of migrants slept on the streets in the blocks surrounding the packed Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown, which is being used as the city’s main welcome center for migrants.
City officials are considering Fields 82, 83, 84 and 85 on the island for the shelter, according to reports in the New York Post and Daily News.
Asked at a news conference Wednesday about housing migrants on the island, or at Central Park or Prospect Park, the city's deputy mayor for health and human services, Anne Williams-Isom would only say, "You know, all options are on the table for us right now."
"I think when we originally did our tent in Randall's Island, that was probably 30,000 migrants ago, so we're here now trying to make sure we look at all the options on the table and that we're able to prioritize children and families," Williams-Isom said.
The plan is already under fire, with the co-chairs of the Randall’s Island Park Alliance writing a letter to Deputy Mayor for Operations Meera Joshi to express their opposition.
Opponents wrote that they want the city to “select a site that does not mean destroying green fields, turning away young athletes and flying in the face of the many supporters who have worked for three decades to build this resource.”
City Councilwoman Diana Ayala, who represents Randall's Island, told the Post that it was “inevitable” City Hall would circle back to the area as it “has been looking under every rock, under every stone.”
Just this week, Adams warned New Yorkers that the year-long crisis will be “coming to a neighborhood near you.”
“We need to localize this madness,” the mayor said Monday. “We have to figure out how we’re going to locate the lives of the inevitable.”
Williams-Isom said Wednesday that the number of people currently in city shelters is more than 107,000, with over 56,000 of them asylum seekers. More than 95,000 migrants have been provided shelter, food and other services from the city since last spring, with more than 2,300 people arriving last week alone.
Williams-Isom reiterated the city's calls for President Joe Biden's administration to declare a federal state of emergency.
"We are seeing 2,300 people a week coming to New York seeking shelter," she said. "That is unsustainable."
The administration also announced plans Wednesday to have a consortium of colleges help migrants with their asylum applications so they can get a step closer to work authorization. The schools include City University of New York (CUNY) schools: Baruch College, City College, Hunter College, and Queens College; Columbia University; New York Law School; and New York University.
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