New York City will open a new migrant shelter capable of housing up to 2,200 single men in the Bronx next month, despite city officials recently claiming a slowing migrant crisis had allowed them to shut down other shelters in the city.
On Friday, mayor Eric Adams announced plans to open the new Bronx facility and close 13 emergency migrant shelters by June. The move came one month after Adams announced the closure of 25 other shelters, including those at Floyd Bennett Field and Randall’s Island, which will be closed by March.
The new shelter will cost the Democrat-run sanctuary city between $250,000 and $340,000 to retrofit the building for its incoming occupants after approving an emergency contract, the New York Post reported. The project is expected to house the migrant men displaced from the Randall’s Island location.
More than 229,000 migrants have entered New York City seeking shelter since the spring of 2022. But the number of migrants in the city’s shelter system has declined for 27 consecutive weeks and is at its lowest point in over 18 months, according to Adams.
Less than 51,000 migrants currently receive shelter services, down from a high of more than 69,000 migrants in January 2024.
“The additional closures we are announcing today provides yet another example of our continued progress and the success of our humanitarian efforts to care for everyone throughout our system,” Adams said on Friday. “Our intensive and smart efforts have helped more than 178,000 asylum seekers — 78 percent of the migrants who have ever been in our care — take the next steps on their journeys towards pursuing the American Dream.”
The new shelter will be located near an area in the South Bronx known as “The Hub,” where open drug use is rampant. Locals have expressed concern about the shelter’s proximity to the drug market and have shared worries about the thousands of migrants who will live in the vicinity.
“We are concerned,” a local store manager told the Post. “We have concerns just in general because there are people lingering in the streets and there have been reports of thefts. It’s going to get worse.”
“I think they are discarding them in the shadows at the edge of the Bronx where they think people won’t get affected.”
Representative Ritchie Torres (D., N.Y.), who is reportedly considering running against New York governor Kathy Hochul in 2026, wondered the same.
“Instead of dismantling open-air drug markets in the Hub, the city is treating the South Bronx as a dumping ground for the endless stream of shelters,” Torres said.
“The Bronx is treated differently than the rest of the city. We are treated as the second-class borough of New York City.”