The Adams administration is moving ahead on a plan to move migrants seeking shelter into various parks and recreational facilities as more people show up each day seeking refuge in New York City.
Councilmember Alexa Avilés said the administration will be settling 100 asylum seekers into the Sunset Park recreation center. She said the center will close down to the public, but the pool will remain open. Likewise, Councilmember Lincoln Restler, said he was notified of an additional plan to use McCarren recreation center in North Brooklyn to settle another 80 asylum seekers. Restler said in a tweet that the relocation would begin “as soon as this weekend.”
The moves come as city officials say they’ve run out of space to house migrants in homeless shelters, including the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown where large groups of mostly migrant men were sleeping on its sidewalks. On Thursday, amid a legal challenge by the Legal Aid Society, the men were relocated.
Restler, who said the the pool and fitness center at McCarren will not be affected, struck a conciliatory tone in his tweets on the location, saying “we will do whatever we can to galvanize compassion & support for our new temporary neighbors.”
Avilés said she was frustrated by City Hall’s lack of communication.
“The Mayor has left us woefully uninformed and has refused to engage my office nor the community,” she said in a tweet. She too added that her community in Sunset Park “is stepping up with compassion as we have always done.”
There are more than 95,000 migrants who have arrived in New York City since the spring of 2022, according to the mayor’s office. Many of the first influx arrived from Venezuela, amid an ongoing economic decline.
The influx began last year when migrants started arriving in northern states — in part due to southern governors busing migrants north, as well as the city’s unique “right-to-shelter” laws that guarantee shelter to anyone seeking it. The Adams administration is looking to change that law, saying the shelter system housing these groups has been severely strained.
“We will continue pushing to secure more appropriate facilities to house people in need and expedite moving NYers from our shelter system into vacant permanent housing,” Restler said in his tweets.
The mayor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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