The Big Apple is opening yet another large-scale migrant shelter at the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens as the city scrambles to find space for the influx of asylum seekers continuing to pour in, Mayor Adams’ administration said Wednesday.
The city’s newest Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Center will be constructed in the parking lot of the state-owned psychiatric center, and will cater to approximately 1,000 single adult male migrants.
The state offered up the space for the mega shelter and will reimburse New York City for the costs to construct, maintain and staff the site, Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services Anne Williams-Isom said, adding the city has already forked out $1.5 billion on the ongoing crisis.
The Creedmoor migrant facility, which is expected to be up and running at some point next month, adds to the 192 emergency sites already set up to handle the relentless flow of asylum seekers flooding in.
More than 56,200 migrants are currently staying at the various city-run shelters — including over 2,900 that have arrived in Gotham in the last week alone, City Hall’s latest figures show.
“As we have consistently communicated, this is a humanitarian crisis unlike any in recent memory,” Williams-Isom said during a briefing on the migrant crisis.
“New York City is continuing to find creative ways to support asylum seekers, but we know it is an unsustainable effort absent a national decompression strategy from the federal government.
“As we open this space as part of a temporary solution, we will continue to call on more support from all levels of government.”
As the migrant crisis continues to escalate, officials said they had already given notice to roughly 100 migrants as of Wednesday under its new 60-day shelter stay limit being imposed on single adult asylum seekers.
The first of the stay limit notices, which officials say was needed to help free up space for migrant families with children, were handed out this week and will continue on a “rolling basis,” Williams-Isom said.