New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced that there was “no more room indoors” for migrants, adding that a strategy is underway to find them homes.
“We need help,” Mr Adams said at a press conference at City Hall on Monday. “It’s not going to get any better. From this moment on, it’s downhill. There is no more room.”
It’s physically impossible for New Yorkers to turn a blind eye to the migrant crisis, as now hundreds of people can be seen sleeping and waiting for help on the sidewalks outside the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown Manhattan, Bloomberg reported.
Mr Adams said that he wanted to “localise this madness,” meaning migrants sleeping outdoors would only do so in certain parts of the city. The mayor did not mention potential locations, however, according to the New York Times.
At a separate news conference, he gave ever-so-slightly clarified what he meant: “I can assure you that this city is not going to look like other cities where there are tents up and down every street.”
Mr Adams continued, “Our next phase of the strategy now that we have run out of room, we have to figure out how we’re going to localise the inevitable that there’s no more room indoors.”
Last week, the New York City mayor met with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. In a statement following the meeting, Mr Adams said Mr Mayorkas promised he would send a DHS employee to the city to serve as “a point person on our asylum seeker needs.”
The statement concluded by asking for federal and state assistance, emphasizing that on top of the 93,000 migrants who arrived last spring, hundreds of asylum seekers arrive in New York City daily.
Also last week, Mr Adams announced that the city will open a new humanitarian relief center in the parking lot next to Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens to provide shelter, medical care and food for 1,000 single male asylum seekers.
