NEW YORK (BLOOMBERG) -- New York City’s facility to house 2,000 migrants in tents on Randall’s Island will open next week and will remain in operation for the foreseeable future, officials said Monday.
The city will open another temporary relief center meant to house 1,000 people outside of the long-closed Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens this week, said Zach Iscol, commissioner of the city Office of Emergency Management. He spoke at a news briefing outside the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown Manhattan, where migrants are being sheltered.
The number of asylum seekers who have entered the city over the past 18 months has reached nearly 100,000, with 57,000 currently in the city’s care, housed at nearly 200 shelters and emergency relief centers the city has opened inside of commercial hotels and vacant buildings. Last week, Mayor Eric Adams announced the city expects the cost of sheltering and caring for the migrants will cost $12 billion over a three-year period, from July 2022 through July 2025.
The tents on Randall’s Island are sturdy enough to withstand New York’s potentially extreme weather as the summer ends, Iscol said.
“Those are tents, but really they’re very real physical structures, they can stand very high winds, they’re cool in the summer, warm in the winter,” Iscol said. “Those types of structures are used in all kinds of different places around the globe. So they are four-season. We could keep people there for a significant amount of time if needed.”
Governor Kathy Hochul met this week with federal officials to request permission to use federally owned sites at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn and Fort Wadsworth on Staten Island to house migrants.
The Randall’s Island shelters are being constructed on fields typically used for youth sports, drawing criticism from some advocates who say the arrangement is unfair for New York City’s children.
West Side Soccer League has gathered 786 signatures for a petition asking the Adams administration to keep sports spaces available for the city’s youth sports organizations.
“By taking away field space from these programs, the city is depriving its children, youth and parents from healthy physical activities that promote community and a healthy lifestyle,” the petition says.
This story originally appeared on Bloomberg.com.
Related
Related
Related
