The migrant shelter at Midtown’s Roosevelt Hotel will be shutting down in the coming months, Mayor Adams announced Monday.
The center, which opened in May 2023, has served as the main arrival center for migrants coming to the city as well as those seeking new shelter placement. It is likely to shutter in late April at the earliest, according to a source familiar with the situation.
At its peak, the center registered an average of 4,000 people. That number has fallen in recent months to 350 per week, according to City Hall.
“Now, thanks to the sound policy decisions of our team, we are able to announce the closure of this site and help even more asylum seekers take the next steps in their journeys as they envision an even brighter future, while simultaneously saving taxpayers millions of dollars,” Adams said in a statement.
“The fact that, within a span of year, we are closing 53 sites and shuttering all of our tent-based facilities shows both our continued progress and our ability, when faced with unprecedented challenges, to do what no other city can.”
The intake, legal and medical services at the center will be absorbed into other areas of the city’s traditional and emergency shelter system, a spokesperson for the mayor said. The mayor’s office did not provide more details on whether some of those services might in fact be eliminated once the Roosevelt is closed.
As the city’s asylum seeker population has decreased in recent months, City Hall has announced the closure of dozens of migrant shelters, including the Randalls Island and Floyd Bennett Field tent shelters. One new mega-shelter in the Bronx has opened to accommodate the overflow from the shuttering sites.
Migrants are pictured outside the Roosevelt Hotel in September 2023. (Luiz C. Ribeiro for New York Daily News)
There are fewer than 45,000 asylum seekers residing in the shelter system, down from a high of 69,000 in January 2024, according to City Hall. More than 232,000 have come through the city since spring 2022.
At the height of the migrant crisis, hundreds of new arrivals resorted to sleeping on the sidewalks as they awaited shelter placement in the overflowing system.
The Roosevelt Hotel was recently the subject of White House ire, as the feds attempted to justified an $80 million retraction of FEMA funds with unsupported claims that the hotel was a hotbed of international gang activity.
In a social media post following the clawback, Kristi Noam, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, claimed that FEMA was “funding the Roosevelt Hotel that serves as a Tren de Aragua base of operations,” referring to a Venezuelan gang.
The mayor filed a lawsuit against the feds over the funds late last week.
With Chris Sommerfeldt