For days now, newly arrived international immigrants have waited night and day outside New York City's Roosevelt Hotel, sleeping shoulder-to-shoulder on the sidewalk in hopes of a bed in the city's shelter system. And for weeks, Mayor Eric Adams has said the city is out of room and sought to dissuade more migrants from arriving.
The scene outside the former hotel — now a migrant shelter and intake center — has underscored the extreme overcrowding in a homeless housing system filled to record levels. City officials and activists alike call it heartbreaking.
