They came from Colombia and Chad, from Burundi, Peru,
Venezuela, Madagascar. In New York they had heard there was a
haven for immigrants, a place to live and get back on their feet.
When they arrived, they found out that they had heard wrong.
Two, three, four days later, they were still lined up outside the city’s
migrant intake center at the Roosevelt Hotel, around the corner
from Grand Central Terminal — close to 200 people, nearly all men.
Sleeping on the sidewalk. Heads resting on book bags, trash bags of
belongings by their sides: the visible faces of a system that has
officially broken down.
transcript
‘We’re Left Outside’: Nearly 200 Migrants Wait as N.Y.C.
Struggles to Provide Shelter
A day after Mayor Eric Adams said New York City had run out of shelter space,
migrants tell us how they are spending their days eating and sleeping outside the
Roosevelt Hotel, hoping to get into the city’s intake center.
I just came, like, since three days or four days I’ve been here. As you see, people are
sitting here. We spend the night here, and the day, as well. We are not comfortable.
We wish we can — they can move us to another place, like a safe place. We cannot
spend a whole week here, you know? It’s not safe. It’s dangerous.
A day after Mayor Eric Adams said New York City had run out of shelter space, migrants tell us how they
are spending their days eating and sleeping outside the Roosevelt Hotel, hoping to get into the city’s
intake center.
For over a year, record numbers of asylum seekers have arrived in
New York from across the globe, nearly doubling the city’s homeless
population in one huge spasm: More than 100,000 people now live
in shelters in the city.
Unlike other American cities, especially in the West, where
thousands live in the streets for lack of other options, New York City
is legally required to give anyone shelter who asks for it.
But now the shelters are full. As the migrants have continued to
arrive, the city has built tents, cobbled together a vast portfolio of
hotels and office buildings turned into housing and given migrants
tickets to go elsewhere. It has not been enough. The mayor has
called for state and federal help, saying the city is overwhelmed.
And officials have also, increasingly, pushed back against the city’s
legal obligations to shelter homeless people.
Some migrants who recently arrived in the city have waited for days in front of the Roosevelt Hotel to be
processed. Since last year, the city’s homeless shelter population has surged past 100,000 people.
Mohammadou Sidiya, 20, from Mauritania in West Africa, stood
beside a friend on Tuesday morning. They had traveled for more
than a month to get here.
They came looking for safety, Mr. Sidiya said in Arabic, through a
digital translation. They failed, he added.
Twenty feet away, a cheerful sign taunted them. “Bienvenidos al
arrival center!” it read. “We are currently at capacity.”
New York City’s descent from a place that was managing to keep up,
just barely, with a ceaseless flow of asylum seekers to a place that
had declared defeat was sudden.
Last week, there were still enough beds to allow the city to honor its
legal obligation to offer shelter to every person who wanted it.
Sometime over the weekend, that stopped being the case.
No explanation was offered. Mayor Eric Adams simply said on
Monday, “There is no more room.” He also said, “From this moment
on, it’s downhill.”
Joshua Goldfein, a staff lawyer at the Legal Aid Society, which filed
the litigation that led to the right to shelter more than 40 years ago,
said he believed that the people sleeping outside the Roosevelt were
there in part because the mayor was trying to pressure Washington
to send more aid and trying to discourage more migrants from
coming.
“There are many ways the city could shelter everyone who is on that
sidewalk if that is what they wanted to do,” he said.
Fabien Levy, a spokesman for the mayor, said on Tuesday that the
194 locations the city has opened to shelter asylum seekers are at
capacity.
“Our teams run out of space every single day, and we do our best to
offer placements where we have space available,” he said. He added
that the city is adding two more big humanitarian relief centers in
the coming weeks, including a mega-tent big enough for 1,000
people in the parking lot of a state psychiatric hospital in Queens.
The city has estimated that the migrants will cost more than $4
billion over two years.
Mr. Levy said that Sunday was the first night that the Roosevelt was
unable to offer all migrants a place to stay indoors, even if on a
chair. He said that on other nights, some had been sent to another
hotel where they could stay on a cot, and that any migrants who
slept on the sidewalk did so by choice. He also noted that migrants
had access to air-conditioned buses.
The Roosevelt Hotel, near Grand Central Terminal, is among nearly 200 facilities the city is using to help
and house new arrivals seeking shelter.Jeenah Moon for The New York Times
Erick Marcano came from Venezuela and said he had waited for three days outside the Roosevelt Hotel.
Jeenah Moon for The New York Times
Behind Mr. Sidiya in the line was Erick Marcano, a laborer from
Venezuela. He said he had taken his place on the line on Saturday
and in the ensuing three days had progressed a total of one block,
from the corner of 46th Street to the corner of 45th. He had used
the time to fashion an effective sun hat by jamming a piece of a
cardboard box with a skull-shaped hole cut into it onto the brim of
his baseball cap.
Mr. Marcano had crossed the border a few days before that and
received help from an immigrant advocacy group. “They asked us in
Texas where we wanted to go in the U.S. and that they would pay for
the ticket, and we told them we wanted to come here, to New York,”
he said.
Outside the Roosevelt, he said, “they just tell me to have patience
and wait.” Down the block, at the entrance to the hotel, families
with young children flowed in and out. The city has prioritized
providing shelter to them, so that only adults are left outside.
Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, a Republican, has chartered some of the
buses that have brought people to New York City, as a way to put
political pressure on Democratic leaders, though the vast majority
of migrants have come in other ways.
On Tuesday, the Legal Aid Society threatened to take the city back to
court. Mr. Goldfein said that Gov. Kathy Hochul also needed to do
more to provide resources and aid to get people housed quickly.
“We are hopeful that the state will step up and meet its obligations
and also that the city will make some changes to what they’re doing
in order to get people off the street,” he said, “but if they don’t, then
we will have to take any appropriate action to protect our clients.”
A 30-year-old migrant from Chad who gave only his first name,
Abdelkerim, said he was surprised to find himself forced to sleep on
the street in New York. “I’d at least think we’d have a place to stay,”
he said.
The migrants have been provided with food while they wait. On
Tuesday, workers with carts went down the line handing out egg sandwiches, bottled water, bananas and popcorn. Just past the end
of the line was Uncle Paul’s pizzeria. The owner, Dino Redzic, said
that he had given out 10 pizzas the night before and was letting the
migrants use his bathroom. “They stay there half an hour and they
wash themselves,” he said.
Mr. Redzic, 50, himself a refugee from the Bosnian war who came
here 30 years ago, said he was disturbed by the scene unfolding
beside his store. “Why is this happening?” he said. “Where are the
churches? Where are the mosques? Where are the people supposed
to take care of them?”
As the afternoon wore on, Ariana Diaz, 34, freshly arrived from
Venezuela via Baja California, took her place at the back of the line.
She had paid for her own plane ticket from the West Coast,
counting on a warmer welcome here.
Where would she stay tonight, Ms. Diaz was asked.
“I don’t even know where I’m standing right now,” she said.
Jeenah Moon for The New York Times