The administration of New York City Mayor Eric Adams is considering housing migrants in pre-fab housing and shipping containers on city streets, using Fort Dix in New Jersey, the Citi Field parking lot and renting out several defunct hospitals and psychiatric facilities upstate and on Long Island, according to a source with direct knowledge of the proposals.
The ideas — which have never been revealed to the public before — are part of the “throwing-spaghetti-at-the-wall” process that’s yielded thousands of potential stop gaps, according to the source, who would only speak to the Daily News under condition of anonymity so they can speak freely about the suggested ideas.
“These are ideas. These have not been fleshed out,” the source said. “A lot of these probably won’t come to fruition.”
The city’s working list of potential shelter solutions has been evolving for months and now includes about 3,000 possibilities, the source added.
Among those that could be used within city limits are the Park Slope Armory, Medgar Evers College, York College, the parking lots at Citi Field and Aqueduct Racetrack, Flushing Meadows Corona Park and even city streets, which would be closed off to traffic and potentially filled with pre-fabricated housing, tents or converted shipping containers.
“Being on the street bed would provide access to water, sewer and electricity and could then support trailers or modular homes,” the source said, adding that the city isn’t considering any specific streets for this presently.
Using trailers, pre-fabs and converted containers is also being considered for use in parking lots at Citi Field and Aqueduct.
Options for outside the city include currently out-of-use facilities at the Pilgrim and Kings Park Psychiatric Centers on Long Island, the Rockland Psychiatric Center, medical facilities in Buffalo, as well as Fort Dix in New Jersey.
Using a federally run location like Fort Dix would likely cost the city — unless a federal state of emergency is declared. If an emergency declaration were to go into effect, the federal government would almost certainly foot the bill there.
Some of the sites that appear on the list and have already been put into use include an airport hangar at JFK Airport and New York City public school gymnasiums. According to the source, using cruise ships — an idea that’s already been floated publicly by the administration — is also still in play.
When asked about the proposals, Kayla Mamelak, a spokeswoman for Adams, didn’t deny that they’re being considered and repeated what’s become a common refrain for the administration.
“Everything is on the table,” she said.
The formulation of the administration’s list comes against the backdrop of a crisis that’s been expanding steadily in New York City and which has forced the city to scour and pay for housing and services for the approximately 100,000 migrants who’ve streamed into the five boroughs over the past year.
The situation has grown so severe, that about 200 migrants were forced to sleep on the street earlier this summer and the city petitioned a state court judge in May to suspend the right to shelter law, which has applied to the city for decades and mandates the city provide shelter for anyone who requests it within a set time frame.
That legal demand led the court to order the city to produce a list of needs that it wants the state to fulfill, which in turn resulted in a response from the state that became public Wednesday.
In its response to the court, the state’s attorney, Faith Gay, condemned aspects of the Adams administration’s handling of the migrant crisis, contending that the administration has been slow to provide reimbursement documentation and sloppy in its handling of state funds.
The ideas on the city’s list of proposed options drew criticisms as well, but also some praise. Some of the ideas, like the possibility of sheltering migrants in housing erected on city streets, generally received a harsh rebuke.
“That is the most ridiculous idea I have ever heard,” said Christine Quinn, director of the homeless services provider, Women in Need. “It has been challenging to have sidewalk cafés in the street. We’re going to put people in the street? That is just asinine, and quite frankly, it’s one of those things that people put on a list so people like me will get enraged about it, and then they’ll slip something else bad in — but that isn’t quite as bad.”
She also ruled out places like the Park Slope Armory because using it would likely lead to barracks-like sleeping arrangements, which have proven problematic from a safety perspective in the past.
But Quinn, who previously served as the City Council Speaker, said there could be merit in some of the other proposals under consideration, such as using places that were once psychiatric facilities on Long Island or in Rockland County.
“There is a possibility for anything that is indoor, not congregate,” she said. “If it’s a former psychiatric facility, you have to strip it of anything that makes it feel like they’re being committed.”
Councilwoman Diana Ayala, who chairs the Council’s general welfare committee, also ruled out using converted containers on city streets, saying that “there is absolutely no way in hell that I could support putting people in shipping containers.” But she appeared open to putting tents in parks and parking lots.
“Parking lots and locations like that offer a lot of square footage, so I could see how they would be attractive for tents,” she said. “I would reserve judgment until until I see exactly where because I think the location is really key. I know we’re at a place where tents cannot be disqualified and pushed aside as an alternative means of housing because it’s better than being on the street.”
Ayala also said that at least one idea she’s been floating has fallen on deaf ears from Team Adams.
“We have a whole building on Wards Island,” she said. “I keep asking about it, and I get crickets.”
Others are critical of the administration’s approach as a whole, though, and said the list of options it’s now working from illustrates why it continues to struggle so much. The better alternative from their view is moving the migrants — as well as homeless native New Yorkers — out of temporary housing and into permanent, affordable housing.
“The bottom line for us is they should be focusing on actually moving people out and creating space that way. Then they would have a lot less need for these kinds of places,” said Josh Goldfein, an attorney with the Legal Aid Society’s Homeless Rights Project. “If they were moving people out, instead of accepting that there’s tens of thousands of New Yorkers in shelter all the time, they’d have a lot more room for migrants.”
Murad Awawdeh, executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition, agreed.
“We’ve seen the increase of folks coming to New York for over a year at this point,” he said. “We need to really work on moving away from this emergency mentality and to a medium- and long-term plan.”
___
© 2023 New York Daily News
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
