As summer migrant numbers are at their usual high number, NYC leaders have made a deal which prompts hotels to offer shelter space to those who need respite, but a line of people sleeping on cardboard boxes outside of one such famed Manhattan hotel is making it clear to authorities that enough isn’t being done
Heartbreaking photos and videos show hundreds of migrants gathered around the Roosevelt Hotel, sleeping on cardboard boxes with no reprieve as the temporary housing for these groups was at capacity.
“We have no more room in the city,” Mr Adams said during a news conference last week at City Hall. In the last year, nearly 100,000 migrants came to the city in search of new lives, and instead found shelters with terrible conditions, bureaucracy, racism, and even relocations.
In January, Mayor Eric Adams’ administration struck a deal worth $275 million in a contract with the Hotel Association of New York City to open up rooms for migrant housing. Hotel bookings were having a slow time coming back post-Covid, so the city is basically renting rooms for the migrant influx.
Migrants tend to cross the US/Mexico border in the Winter and early Spring, but various events have caused fluctuations in these patterns. With a huge flow of immigrants seeking asylum or other paperwork, New York’s regular shelters are at capacity, especially when considering that the amount of unhoused individuals is also increasing.