San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
NYC scrambles to shelter latest wave of migrants
NEW YORK — New York City’s mayor says he plans to erect hangar-sized tents as temporary shelter for thousands of international migrants who have been bused into the Big Apple as part of a campaign by Republican governors to disrupt federal border policies.
The tents are among an array of options — from using cruise ships to summer camps — the city is considering as it struggles to find housing for an estimated 13,000 migrants who have wound up in New York City after being bused north from border towns in Texas and Arizona.
“This is not an everyday homelessness crisis, but a humanitarian crisis that requires a different approach,” Mayor Eric Adams said in a statement.
New York City’s huge system of homeless shelters has been straining to accommodate the unexpected new flow of migrants seeking asylum in the United States.
In Arizona and Texas, officials have loading people on buses for free trips to Washington and New York City. More recently, Florida, which has a Republican governor running for re-election, flew migrants — at public cost — to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts.
Adams said the city had opened 23 emergency shelters — and was considering 38 more — to handle the people bused into the city since May. The city also recently opened a new, multimillion dollar intake center to help the newcomers get settled.
The first tent has been proposed
Dilan Jimenez waits at a shelter in New York City after arriving on a bus in August from Texas. The city is struggling to cope with thousands of new migrants who have been bused north.
for a remote corner of the Bronx, a parking lot at a popular city beach on Long Island Sound where public transportation is limited. Officials are looking into other areas.
A rendering of the likely design of the facility, released by the city, showed rows and rows of cots. Presumably, the tent would be heated, as autumn nights in the city can be
quite cool, but the city released few details.
City officials said the facilities would only house migrants for up to four days while the city arranges other types of shelter.
Advocates for the homeless were unsure how to react.
“We just don’t have enough detail to about what their plan is to form an opinion,” said Josh Goldfein, a staff attorney
with the Legal Aid Society. “If the goal here is to sort of quickly assess what people need and get them connected to services that will help them then that will be great.
“All we know, is a location, and a picture of a big tent,” he said. “We don’t know what’s going to be in it — or who.”