New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced Wednesday, Oct. 9, that the migrant shelter on Randall’s Island will close by the end of February 2025. “The number of asylum seekers in city shelters has decreased for 14 straight weeks and is now at its lowest point in over a year,” the mayor’s website states.
This comes as New York City is seeking a contract for 14,000 additional hotel rooms to house migrants through next year, according to the New York Post.
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With the arrival of more than 200,000 migrants to the Big Apple since the spring of 2022, the city is already leasing more than 15,000 rooms in over 150 hotels across the city.
The city projects that combining the last two years and this fiscal year, it has already spent $2.3 billion on just housing for migrants, with much of that going to hotels, the New York Post reported.
Nicole Gelinas, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute think tank, told the New York Post that the burden should not be on taxpayers to foot the migrant bill. Instead, she said, Gov. Kathy Hochul, D-N.Y., should step in and take control of the crisis.
“We should stop using hotels as shelters by the end of the year,” she said, “and should serve the tourism industry, instead.”
The Comptroller’s Office of New York City projects that overall costs for asylum-seekers will be close to $3.42 billion for fiscal year 2025. The Washington Examiner reported in August that New York City has spent more than $5 billion on the migrant crisis.
City workers started dismantling the Randall’s Island shelter, which once had 3,000 beds, on Wednesday night.
The mayor’s office says the site will return to being a public park by March.
