RANDALL’S ISLAND, New York City (WABC) — After days of immigrants sleeping on the streets outside a hotel in Midtown, New York City unveiled a new plan for housing.
Like a prior plan last fall, it calls for building a shelter on Randall’s Island – this time on soccer fields.
The city says this new facility would hold two thousand adult men.
The state is supposed to fund the operation, but questions still remain – like how will this shelter differ from the previous one, which did close.
The city constructed the first shelter there last October but shut it down just weeks later because it wasn’t being used.
Migrants didn’t want to stay there because of its isolation.
“As the number of asylum seekers in our care continues to grow by hundreds every day, stretching our system to its breaking point and beyond, it has become more and more of a Herculean effort to find enough beds every night,” said Mayor Eric Adams. “We’re grateful to Governor Hochul and New York State for their partnership in opening this new humanitarian relief center and covering the costs, and we need more of the same from all levels of government.
The West Side Soccer League, which is one of the groups that uses those fields, has created a petition to stop the new facility, saying that the new facility could mean s loss for youth organizations in the fall.
The league sent an email saying in part,
“As you may have heard, the NYC government is considering the use of soccer fields on Randall’s Island for use as a shelter for newly-arrived immigrants. Under this plan, a shelter would be constructed on Fields 82-85, which is normally used for children’s recreational activities. And although we don’t currently use those fields as much in the Fall, their loss for all youth organizations may mean we lose other field space as all spaces get shifted around to compensate for the loss of this field time. Additionally, the impact to the condition of the fields would mean that even when the fields are returned for youth soccer programming, their condition would likely be so bad their use will be limited and it will take time to repair.”
Meanwhile, we’re getting a look inside the Roosevelt Hotel which is an intake center as well as a shelter.
Video shows cots set up inside the large spaces and hotel rooms are being used by migrant families.
That’s in part why most of the people sleeping and standing in line outside of the hotel were men.
Mayor Adams says the city cannot at this point provide basic care to the asylum seekers.
He spoke with “Nightline” and said that with 57,000 people in the city’s shelter system, the city is simply running out of options.
“This room here is filled to capacity, the hotel, filled to capacity, all those chairs you saw downstairs, filled to capacity, all the sites we have out, filled to capacity. There was no more room anywhere. Not only at this building but at the 195 other locations that we opened. There was no more room,” Mayor Adams said. “We’re at capacity. We have been providing those food, shelter, clothing, food educating children making sure they get the level of dignity they deserve but we cannot kid ourselves.”
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