The Riverside Press-Enterprise
Why a $25M plan to relocate NYC migrant families is struggling
In a tidy suburban apartment complex on Long Island, a Venezuelan mother of two surveyed her new home and declared herself blessed.
Sury Saray Espine and her family had spent 13 months in a homeless shelter in New York City. Now, in early February, they were moving into a one-bedroom in Central Islip with a galley kitchen and access to a swimming pool.
Best of all, the state would pay their rent for a year, through a resettlement program designed to house 1,250 migrant families at a fraction of the cost of keeping them in New York City’s overflowing shelters.
The family’s experience, however, has been an anomaly.
The state’s Migrant Relocation Assistance Program has failed to live up to expectations, moving only 174 households into permanent homes outside New York City since it began in July.
“Man, do I wish that program was working better,” Jackie Bray, the state emergency services commissioner, said in November. “That program is not at this point succeeding. And that’s a huge disappointment to us.”
By contrast, the state of Illinois, which launched a comparable program in December 2022, says it has moved 4,697 households into apartments — 27 times as many as New York.
The New York program differs in many ways from Illinois’: New York limits participation to families with children who have filed for asylum and are on track for work authorization. It aims to move migrants outside of New York City, whereas the Illinois program — which has since been curtailed — lets migrants resettle in
Chicago. It remains unclear what will happen once that program’s shorter-term subsidy expires.
New York’s program was intended to chip away at the migrant shelter population that stands at about 65,000 people, including 15,000 families, as the crisis approaches its two-year anniversary. The influx is a product of increased border crossings, paralysis in Washington and New York’s unique rule requiring it to offer a bed to every homeless person.
But several factors are keeping the program from shifting into high gear, according to state and city officials and the local nonprofits that try to match migrants with apartments.
Many migrants do not want to leave the city. Many suburban and rural counties are unwilling to take them in. Across the state, there is a shortage of affordable housing. And for the program to work, rents must be low enough that when the state stops paying, the family can shoulder the burden.
The state says it has tried to make the program more appealing to both migrants and landlords, who might reasonably worry about whether tenants will be able
to pay rent once the subsidy ends. New York is offering landlords bonuses of up to $15,000. And it has made marketing videos selling distant counties to migrants.
As extravagant as it may sound to offer families a year of free rent in a decent apartment, the program has the potential to save the government money. New York City is paying an average of nearly $400 per night to shelter each migrant household. So keeping 1,250 families in shelters for a year costs at least $180 million.
The $25 million budget for the resettlement program works out to about $55 per night for each family.
The program works like this: The city shelter system looks for qualified families who are willing to move. It then notifies the state, which has hired local nonprofits to find landlords willing to rent to the family. If a match is made, the family moves in.
For the first year, the nonprofits make sure the families have what they need to survive and become self-sufficient. That can include connecting them to food, doctors and schools, as well as offering job training, English instruction and rides to interviews.