The last running hotel-turned-migrant shelter in New York City is set to close in April.
The Row Hotel, which was also the first to be converted into a migrant shelter in 2022, is located a block away from Times Square. Housing migrants in the luxury property’s 1,300 units costs the city $5.13 million a month.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced on Monday that the city would not renew its contract with Rockpoint Group, which owns the establishment.
He called the closure a “major milestone in our administration’s recovery from this international humanitarian crisis,” in a statement to the Washington Examiner.
“Three years ago, thousands of migrants and asylum seekers began streaming into our city every week — and the Adams administration stepped up.”
“We opened hundreds of emergency migrant shelters to ensure no family slept on the street. Since then, we have successfully helped more than 200,000 migrants leave our shelter system and take the next step toward self-sufficiency,” Adams continued.
At its peak, New York City was running 220 migrant shelters. In 2024, 80% of its 193 operating shelters were former hotels.
“We have skillfully and humanely managed a national humanitarian crisis — and have done what no other city could do,” he added.
The Row has become a hotspot for crime and chaos, with numerous recorded incidents of attacks against NYPD officers by residents who are members of the Tren de Aragua gang.
City residents are celebrating the closure and the end of mass sheltering.
“Hallelujah. I’m happy that it’s happening,” said a resident of The Camelot apartment complex across the street. “We pay a lot of money to live here, and it doesn’t seem fair.”
“There are people sitting here all day, littering, leaving food waste, water bottles,” the resident said. “A lot of them have children, and there are women sitting around here smoking weed all day, the children are just playing on the street, on the bike lanes.”
One security guard said he started wearing a wedding ring because he’s been propositioned twice by migrant prostitutes staying at the hotel.
The closures come as President Donald Trump’s immigration policies have reduced illegal border crossings by over 99%. CNN recently predicted the United States will reach negative net migration in 2025, for the first time in 50 years.
The 3,400 current residents of the Row will be moved to the city’s traditional shelter system, according to the New York Times.
A spokesman for the mayor’s office noted that the city government has also “purchased more than 65,000 tickets to help migrants exit the shelter system and reach their preferred destinations.”
The mayor’s office also noted that of the migrants already in New York, 110,000 asylum applications have been processed so far, accounting for over 90% of those eligible.
That levels out to $3950 a unit, a few hundred dollars above the average monthly rate for a single room in NYC.