PASS ON FREE RIDES
Only 2% of migrants accept tix to leave city
Less than 2% of adult migrants per day are accepting free plane or bus tickets to leave the Big Apple once they are booted from the city’s overflowing shelter system, newly released data shows.
Of the roughly 1,600 asylumseekers who flock to the East Village intake center each day, an average of just 30 per day have been willing to relocate to another city or state, according to data obtained by Gothamist from the city Emergency Management agency.
In September, Mayor Adams’ administration cut the time that adult migrants can stay at city-run shelters to 30 days, in a bid to free up space in the already overburdened system.
As a result, hundreds of adult migrants have for months been flooding the intake center, where they can either reapply for taxpayer-funded temporary housing, which could see them sent to hotels upstate — or take up the offer of a free one-way bus or plane ticket.
The data, collected between Dec. 17 to March 3, shows that just 15% of the migrants on average were able to secure another bed after trying to re-enter the shelter system at the center — located at the former St. Brigid School on East Seventh Street — after getting their 30-day eviction notice.
The city has so far coughed up $7.6 million to re-ticket migrants out of the Big Apple since spring 2022, a City Hall spokesperson told The Post.
Moving out
The top destinations include other parts of New York state, Illinois, Texas, Florida, Colorado, Minnesota, Georgia, Virginia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.
It wasn’t immediately clear how much of that $7.6 million has been forked out at the East Village center. Asylum-seekers can also get reticketed at other shelters, including the main intake center at the former Roosevelt Hotel.
City officials, however, insist that roughly 60% of the migrants who have come through the Big Apple’s shelter system since spring 2022 — or about 113,000 — have already “taken the next steps in their journeys.” This includes asylum-seekers who are no longer in the city’s care because they either support themselves or left using their own means.
“We’re laser-focused on using intensive case management, reticketing and legal support to help more people move out of shelter,” a City Hall spokesperson said.
“We need the federal government to finish the job they started,” the rep added, “by providing more asylum-seekers with expedited work authorization [and] sending additional financial support to New York City.”