Midtown Migrant Shelter Evicted For Fire Safety Concerns: Report

MIDTOWN, NY — Migrant residents in a Midtown building were forced out after the FDNY deemed the building unsafe for habitation, according to the New York Daily News.

An inspection at an old Touro College building on West 31st St. near Eighth Avenue revealed that the building — one of the dozens of makeshift emergency shelter sites operated by the city to house the influx of people seeking asylum — lacked a functioning fire safety system, reports the Daily News.

The building has housed hundreds of migrants for months and some were being moved out as early as last week, says the Daily News, with the city telling the now shelter-less adults to report back to the city's migrant intake and arrival center at the Roosevelt Hotel to reapply for shelter.

Some of the migrants told Daily News reporters that they feared they could end up sleeping on the street.

“If we can’t find anywhere, we will sleep on the street,” Sega Saleman, a 33-year-old migrant from Mauretania, told the Daily News. He had been staying at the Touro building for a month, he told the reporter.

The Touro site is the same location where one of Mayor Adams' top advisors, retired police inspector Tim Pearson, was reported to accost, push and physically grab a female security guard who declined to allow him inside because he refused to identify himself, according to THE CITY and 12 eyewitnesses of the incident who spoke with the online news outlet.

Read the whole story of the Touro eviction at the Daily News.