Big Apple officials are weighing handing out small tents to arriving migrants and setting up campsite-style shelters in public parks as the city plans for the potential next phase of its ongoing asylum seeker crisis, The Post has learned.
Mayor Eric Adams and other officials have been discussing the potential encampments and searching for large outdoor spaces in a bid to cope with the relentless influx of migrants flooding Gotham, a source confirmed Wednesday.
Details of the budding proposal, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, came just one day after Hizzoner warned migrants would soon be sleeping on the streets given the city has run out of space to house the 65,000 people already in its care.
While the city has already set up Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Center pop-up sites — including at Randall’s Island and Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens — to help shelter hundreds of single adult migrants, the possible new plan would be more like campground sites in parks and other outdoor spaces, those familiar with the talks said.
Asked about the tent plan, a City Hall spokesperson only said: “All options are on the table.”
Adams did not float the possibility of doling out tents to newly arrived migrants during his Tuesday press conference, but said his office was working to find a “humane” solution to the overburdened shelter system.
“We are out of room, and it’s not if people will be sleeping on the streets, it’s when. We are at full capacity,” the mayor said.
“Everything is on the table,” he added, when asked if the city was weighing putting migrants in public parks.
Hizzoner also acknowledged that his administration had had discussions with leaders in “other countries” about managing tent encampments.
“I have to manage it in a way that we don’t see what’s happening in other cities, where you’re seeing tent cities pop up all over the place,” Adams said. “We have to make sure that people have of some type of restroom facilities, some type of shower network.”
“The chief of staff and I were on a call yesterday with those who do this in other countries to figure out what we can do to manage this the best way possible.”
He was coy, however, when pressed on whether he was planning to set up more tent city shelters — or encampments.
“We’re finding out what are our options. Believe it or not, tents are costly. Everything is costly,” Adams said.