Times Square Hotel Is NYC's Next Migrant Center, Mayor Says

NEW YORK CITY — A Times Square hotel will join a controversial tent city as part of Mayor Eric Adams' plan to set up emergency shelters for a thousands-strong influx of asylum seekers, officials said.

Mayor Eric Adams announced Wednesday that Row NYC hotel in Midtown will house at least 200 migrant families.

His announcement came one day after he told New Yorkers can expect migrant facilities to come to "every community."

“As the numbers of asylum seekers entering New York City continues to increase without an end in sight, the city’s family-focused Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Center will soon open to serve families with children and provide them with the care and compassion they deserve," he said in a statement about the Midtown hotel facility.

At least 18,600 asylum seekers, mostly from South America, have arrived in New York City in recent months, city officials said.

The migrant influx partly driven by busloads of migrants being shipped from Texas has strained the city's shelter system to its limit, and could cost the city $1 billion in the coming year, Adams has said.

Adams last week declared an emergency over the migrant crisis — a move that eased rules to build temporary facilities, which officials call humanitarian relief centers, to house asylum seekers before they enter the city's shelter system.

But the temporary shelter plan hasn't been well-received.

A planned tent city in The Bronx was scrapped after it was flooded. City officials since announced plans to move the tent facility to Randall's Island. And Adams has reportedly been in negotiations to house migrants on a cruise ship.

Advocates have reacted warily to the prospect of tent cities and cruise ship housing for migrants. They have argued that hotels will better serve asylum seekers and their needs.

The Row Hotel appears to be the first humanitarian relief center in which city officials plan to house migrant families. It could eventually house more than the initial 200 families planned, officials said.

The announcement came just hours after advocates with The Legal Aid Society and Coalition for the Homeless highlighted an unfortunate milestone: the city's shelter system on Monday reached a single-day record of 62,174 people.

The record shattered the previous one-day high-water mark of 61,415 set in January 2019, they said.

“The increase in the shelter census is fueled by rising numbers of people entering the system, by bureaucratic bottlenecks precluding residents from transitioning into permanent and safe affordable housing quickly, and, most notably, by the City’s continued failure to create anywhere near enough affordable housing for the New Yorkers who need it most," the advocates said in a statement.

Adams, in an address last week, said one in five people in city shelters are migrants. He said the city is on track to have 100,000 people within its shelter system in the year to come.