Mayor Eric Adams, who was clearly irritated, recently declared that he was going to relocate migrants into larger tent shelters since New York City was “out of the room” and that he was now considering all of his options due to his concern over an impending epidemic of migrants camped out on the streets.
“I want to be clear, the visual signs of this crisis in this city, people are going to start to see it,” Adams stated during his weekly Q&A session with reporters, which took place a few days after the FDNY closed more than six emergency shelters because of potentially dangerous circumstances.
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Mayor Adam stated, “We are out of the room, and it’s not if people will be sleeping on the streets, it’s when. We are at full capacity,” he continued, “This is going to hurt and it’s not going to be pretty.”
People will be sleeping on the streets when we run out of space, not if. The Democrat stated that “this is going to hurt and it’s not going to be beautiful” since “we are at full capacity.”
In addition to providing assistance to tens of thousands of homeless New Yorkers, the city’s overburdened shelter system is currently housing over 60,000 asylum seekers. Adams stated that his office was collaborating with specialists to create a more “humane” approach.
“When we reach that point where people sleeping on streets, we need to manage it” he added, so that “it is not a citywide visual state of chaos.”
“We have to sort of localize it as much as possible, we have to make sure people have some sort of restroom facilities, some type of shower network,” Adams noted.
When questioned by journalists about whether he was referring to more Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Center tent cities to house migrants, Adams remained evasive and stated the city was attempting to discover “large spaces.”
“We’re finding out what are our options. Believe it or not, tents are costly. Everything is costly. What we are dealing with right now is a depletion of resources that is going to threaten our ability to provide basic services to New Yorkers. And I can’t allow that to happen.”
Adams jokingly offered to set up a roundtable with his detractors to hear their suggestions for housing the waves of new immigrants. Adams was obviously upset and repeatedly complained that his government hadn’t received enough credit for its management of the problem. He insisted that the request to sit down was real when questioned thereafter.
“Right now, what do we do right now with 2,500 to 4,000 people coming here a week, coming faster than leaving? That’s the question we need to answer.”
Amid criticism from activists for the homeless and asylum seekers, the mayor added that the city was still working to repeal the “Right to Shelter” statute, stating that it was impossible for the bill’s authors to have “visualized that this city would receive over 130,000 migrants” since last spring.
Regarding his remorse for how he handled the situation, Hizzoner stated that he should have gone to South America and Mexico earlier this month to “see what we’re facing.”
Since the spring of last year, more than 140,000 people from the US-Mexico border have been transported to New York City, and as of this writing, approximately 66,000 of them are still in the care of the city.
