As a winter storm takes aim at New York City, long lines of people needing shelter built up outside an East Village migrants center on Friday.
With a wintry mix of snow and sleet forecast for Saturday, volunteers worried that migrants will wait for hours or even overnight outside the center during the storm in hope of securing a shelter bed.
The volunteers take the long line as a sign that the city is ill-prepared to handle another influx of people looking for shelter, as families with children will need to find new housing as their 60-day limits in city shelters start to expire next week.
“It’s a ticking bomb,” said Mammad Mahmoodi, founder of volunteer group EV Loves. “One of these days, one of them is just going to lose it… Understand this: They are pushing people to the brink.”
Since the site opened in October, migrants have often queued outside the building, a former Catholic school.
Since the holidays, the line has stretched longer than ever. On Friday, more than 1,000 people seeking shelter stood on a line that stretched several blocks.
With temperatures dipping below freezing and a winter storm slated to hit the Big Apple on Saturday, migrants kicked out of city shelters after their stay limits will keep lining up outside the site in Manhattan’s East Village where they hope to be reassigned to a new shelter bed.
“People just have to hang there — and especially now, with all the weather getting really cold, you know, it’s quite a miserable situation,” Mahmoodi said.
“The system is in place, but the issue is a backlog. There are not enough open beds. The city hasn’t acted fast enough to prepare space for these folks.”
Asylum seekers come to the site after the expiration of their 30- and 60-day time limits on their stay in a shelter. Wait times can be as long as a week, as the city struggles to find available beds for the migrants — who in the meantime, sleep in makeshift shelters or on the streets.
For several days this week, the line was more than 1,000 people, said Assemblyman Harvey Epstein, whose office is across the street from the the re-ticketing site in the former St. Brigid School.
“This idea of looping people out every 30 days has created a crisis,” Epstein said. “And 95% of the people are still going back into shelter, so the reality is people aren’t taking the option to go someplace else, they’re staying here in New York. We need to have better solutions than just making people reapply for housing.”
The 30-day policy, established by Mayor Adams in September, was meant to free up space within the shelter system for new arrivals as they continue to pour into the city.
“I appreciate what the mayor is trying to do, but I don’t think this is the right solution,” Epstein said, adding that the city should work to find alternative spaces to house migrants and look for other solutions as the federal government stalls on expanding work permits.
More than 164,000 asylum seekers have come through New York City over the past year and a half, and around 67,000 of them remain in the city’s shelter system.
Adams has estimated that the city’s cost of offering them shelter and other services will run to $12 billion. He’s said city agencies will be pushed into crisis without federal help.
“People are still backlogged from the week before,” Mahmoodi said. “And we are incredibly stressed because next Friday, families with children, over 4,000 of them are going to get kicked out. So we don’t know what’s going to happen.”
