Mayor Eric Adams says the city is looking at 20 school gyms to house migrants as the continued daily arrivals threaten to overwhelm the city’s already struggling social service systems.
Adams is facing outcry from parents over the decision to potentially house migrants in the gyms, but during an interview on Fox 5’s Good New York Tuesday, he said the measure would be a last resort and that the city is quickly running out of options.
“The 20 gyms that we are looking at … are separate from the actual school buildings. They are independent from the school buildings,” Adams said Tuesday morning. “This is one of the last places we want to look at. And none of us are comfortable with having to take these drastic steps. But I could not have been more clear for the last few months of what we are facing: over 65,000 migrant asylum seekers have reached our city.”
Adams said no determinations have been made about the gyms and the potential move comes amid other extraordinary measures city and state leaders are taking to manage the flow of migrants. The already burgeoning crisis could be exacerbated by the expiration last week of Title 42, a pandemic-era federal measure that allowed the government to turn away asylum seekers at the border to curb the spread of COVID-19.
Last week, Gothamist reported that Gov. Kathy Hochul requested clearance from President Joe Biden to establish a housing facility at Floyd Bennett Field, a former military airfield in Jamaica Bay now managed by a division of the National Park Service.
On Saturday, Adams announced the city would be converting the shuttered Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown to a migrant arrival center.
Efforts by Adams to send migrants to Orange and Rockland counties have been met with hostility and lawsuits by local leaders there. Parents at schools in Coney Island and Sunset Park have been protesting the potential use of the gyms to house migrants.
Destiny Martin told Gothamist Monday she pulled her 11-year-old son out of school early Monday because she was uncomfortable with migrants staying at a gym in P.S.188 on Coney Island.
“We don’t know any of their back story. We just know they’re immigrants and that’s so sad,” Martin said.
Monique Brown, also a parent with kids at P.S. 188, said she doesn’t feel the same concern, especially since the school year is nearing its end.
“They came from this place, that place. Ok. School’s about to be over in a month. So at the end of the day, leave those people alone,” Brown said.
Adams said without more help from the federal government, other New York leaders were going to have to shoulder some of the burden.
“We’re not getting the support that we deserve here in New York City,” he said. “It’s clear what the blueprint has become: Send migrants to these big cities in the north, particularly to New York City and it has overwhelmed our services. Every service in our city is going to be impacted by this action.”
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