NYC's era of migrant megashelters is drawing to a close

The end of New York City's era of migrant megashelters is drawing nearer.

The last tent camp for migrants, which comprises 1,300 beds on the grounds of the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens, will close by June, Mayor Eric Adams announced Feb. 14. In January, workers dismantled a nearly 2,000-bed tent camp for migrant families on Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn. A 3,000-bed tent camp on Randall’s Island has been fully vacated and will shut down by the end of the month. And another 2,400-bed shelter in Clinton Hill is also due to close by June.

And a 2,900-person shelter and intake center at the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown, a symbol of New York City’s migrant crisis, will also soon close, Adams announced on Monday.

New York City constructed the sprawling sites in mid-2023 in the midst of a humanitarian crisis during which more than 232,000 shelter-seeking migrants arrived since spring 2022 and quickly overwhelmed the city’s traditional shelter system. But as fewer asylum-seekers arrive, New York City has closed or announced plans to close nine out of 10 shelters housing over 1,000 people.

These makeshift accommodations have been hypervisible symbols of the immigration surge under the Biden administration, and of the city’s ongoing struggle to manage the influx. The sites and the newcomers have stoked controversy as neighbors complain of lost public space, crowding, excess trash in the streets and other quality-of-life concerns.

The era of the megashelter isn’t entirely over. Several large sites remain at hotels in Midtown, and another 2,200-bed shelter for men has opened in the South Bronx, mainly to accommodate migrants displaced from other sites. But the planned closure of dozens of migrant shelters — 36 thus far — marks “a significant milestone,” said Molly Schaeffer, director of the Mayor's Office of Asylum Seeker Operations, in a statement.

“Our administration has effectively moved us to the opposite side of the mountain we were forced to climb,” Mayor Eric Adams said in a statement, announcing the closure of the Creedmoor site.

New York City currently operates 182 migrant shelters, down from a peak of 219.

The city’s migrant shelter census has been declining for over seven months, according to City Hall spokesperson Liz Garcia. Currently, 44,500 migrants are living in city shelters, down from a high of 69,000 in January 2024. On average, more people are leaving the shelter system each week than entering, according to city comptroller data.

The Adams administration has been quick to take credit for the decline, citing its policy of limiting shelter stays for migrants to 30 and 60 days, and other efforts to nudge migrants out of the shelter system.

City officials also credit former President Joe Biden's executive order last spring, which significantly limited avenues for immigrants to apply for asylum. Under the order, border officials could rapidly turn away asylum-seekers, effectively closing the U.S.-Mexico border, when illegal crossings exceed a certain level.

President Donald Trump has since effectively banned all avenues to seek asylum.

'Thank God this is over'

People living near shelters that are slated to close soon say they are glad to see the sites wind down.

“Thank God this is over,” said Renee Collymore, a Democratic liaison for the local Assembly district and a vocal opponent of the shelter in her Clinton Hill neighborhood in Brooklyn.

At a rally last summer that Collymore helped organize, Clinton Hill residents held up signs that said “400 not 4,000,” indicating their preference for a smaller shelter.

Some immigrant advocates and elected officials have also said the conditions at megashelters, which typically feature hundreds or thousands of people living in congregate settings and without lockers, have been substandard.

“Those megashelters have been inhumane,” City Councilmember Crystal Hudson said. “Nobody should be living in those conditions.”

Hudson added that shelter locations are supposed to be confidential, which has been untenable at massive shelter sites — and their highly publicized locations could make the sites targets for potential immigration enforcement actions.

City Councilmember Mercedes Narcisse, whose district includes Floyd Bennett Field, said it was difficult to address the challenges of migrants alongside neighbors’ complaints about the shelters.

She received complaints about migrants panhandling, ringing some neighbors’ doorbells, and excess trash around the shelter and nearby bus station.

“The closure of the shelter marks the end of a trying time for the surrounding communities,” Narcisse said.

This isn’t the first time that the city’s faced challenges over megashelters. In 1985, the Coalition for the Homeless won a lawsuit against the city for failing to comply with state law limiting shelters to 200 people. State judges ordered the city to downsize large shelters — some housing 500 and 700 men — in subsequent lawsuits in the early 1990s.

The state set the shelter size limit because "massive institutions, particularly for impoverished and disabled populations such as the homeless, are simply impossible to operate in a humane fashion," said Barbara Blum, the former state social services commissioner, in papers filed with the court in 1984, according to a 1992 New York Times report.

The state no longer has shelter size restrictions. Current city law bars adult shelters from exceeding 200 people. However, those rules have been suspended for migrant shelters under a series of emergency executive orders issued by Adams.

The closures raise other concerns

Notwithstanding those issues, the closures raise other concerns.

Kathryn Kliff, staff attorney for the Legal Aid Society’s Homeless Rights Project, said she worries that with all the closures, there won’t be enough capacity to house all shelter residents.

”We're not seeing how the math is going to work,” Kliff said. “We’re awaiting a follow-up with them so they can explain that to us.”

Kliff says the time is nearing for the court to end a legal agreement allowing the city to loosen some of its adult shelter rules during the influx.

The settlement, from March, allows the city to stray from the usually required number of staff, bathrooms, beds and services, among other minimum standards under the city’s “right-to-shelter” rules.

“ We do feel like they are taking steps that show that they are winding down their so-called crisis,” Kliff said. “That is why we are in constant communication with them about whether the crisis plan is still necessary.”

Terminating the settlement from last spring would mean an end to ad-hoc sites with more lax rules, and an end to migrant megashelters as well.

Deputy Mayor Anne Williams-Isom, who has led the city’s asylum-seeker response, has repeatedly said that the city’s goal is to house all migrants, mostly asylum-seekers, in traditional Department of Homeless Services shelters, rather than ad-hoc sites run by other agencies.

But Kliff said DHS’s traditional shelter system is not yet equipped to take on the entirety of the city’s migrant population due to lack of capacity.

Currently the DHS system has a little over 1,000 vacancies for single adults, according to the Coalition for the Homeless, well below the tens of thousands of migrants still being housed by the city.

This article was updated with the news that the Roosevelt Island shelter in Midtown is closing in June.