As New York City faces the challenge of housing nearly 65,000 asylum seekers from the southern border, a related problem has emerged: a notable and growing number of them are sleeping outdoors.
The New York Times interviewed more than a dozen immigrants this week who said they have been sleeping outside for two months, and spotted many others during morning visits to areas near immigrant shelters.
Some immigrants said they were expelled from the shelter system after the city began imposing stricter time limits on stays starting in late May.
Others said they prefer to sleep outdoors because they were assigned to distant shelters — like a warehouse at Kennedy International Airport — that are miles away from the jobs they found. Many others left the giant facilities of a congregation where the city is housing thousands of people in rows of folding beds, which some immigrants described as unsafe and unsanitary.
The migration crisis persists as a political puzzle for Mayor Eric Adams, turning New York City into a humanitarian refuge for more than 200,000 immigrants who have passed through the city’s shelter system since early 2022. The influx has overwhelmed the city’s budget and raised concerns about quality of life among some New Yorkers.
Overwhelmed by the flow of immigrants, New York City officials are facing the delicate balancing act of persuading immigrants to leave an overloaded shelter system without increasing the number of people on the streets — a prospect that could give new fuel to Republican attacks ahead of the presidential election and feed anti-immigrant sentiment in a city where residents’ opinions on immigration continue to be tested.
Source: The New York Times