Migrants Will Sleep Outdoors Because ‘There Is No More Room,’ Adams Says

Supported by

Mayor Eric Adams said New York had run out of shelter space for migrants, and he defended a troubled contractor working with the city on its response.

By Emma G. Fitzsimmons and Jay Root

The images outside the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown Manhattan early Monday were stark: Scores of migrants huddled in a line stretching more than a block, some still sleeping as they waited to be processed in New York City’s intake center.

Hours later, Mayor Eric Adams declared that the city had entered a new phase in its migrant crisis, and that the scene outside the Roosevelt Hotel could become more common and widespread.

As the Adams administration struggles to respond to an influx of 90,000 migrants from the southern border, the mayor, a Democrat, said that the city had run out of indoor space to house people and that the situation was only going to deteriorate.

“It’s not going to get any better,” he said at a news conference at City Hall on Monday. “From this moment on, it’s downhill. There is no more room.”

Mr. Adams said that he wanted to “localize this madness” so that people sleeping outdoors were contained to certain parts of the city, without identifying the potential locations or making it clear if people would be sleeping on sidewalks or in tents.

“Our next phase of the strategy now that we have run out of room, we have to figure out how we’re going to localize the inevitable that there’s no more room indoors,” he said at an unrelated news conference on public safety.

But Mr. Adams warned that migrants would not be allowed to sleep wherever they want: “I can assure you that this city is not going to look like other cities where there are tents up and down every street.”

The mayor’s comments came a day after The New York Times revealed that the city gave a medical services firm a no-bid $432 million contract to assist with its migrant crisis. The firm, DocGo, has bused hundreds of asylum seekers upstate to cities including Albany, but many of the migrants there said that they felt misled and abandoned, and that local security guards hired by DocGo had repeatedly threatened them.

DocGo, which provided Covid testing and vaccination services during the pandemic, is also involved in running the city’s “arrival center” for migrants at the Roosevelt Hotel. Over the weekend, people were seen sleeping outside the hotel with blankets, and vans were provided so that people could cool off on a hot summer day.

The Roosevelt, a sprawling 1,000-room hotel on East 45th Street near Grand Central Terminal, had been closed for nearly three years when Mr. Adams announced in May that it would serve as an arrival center. Staff members from DocGo help with the intake process and provide medical services, according to city officials.

Mr. Adams defended DocGo at the news conference on Monday, saying that it had done good work responding to the pandemic and the migrant crisis. The mayor said he still had confidence in the firm while vowing to correct any deficiencies.

“We’re going to scrutinize them,” Mr. Adams said. “We’re going to make sure — here’s your contract, here are the services, if you do something wrong we’re going to bring you in, and say you have to correct it. But they’ve done a herculean job of this humanitarian crisis that we’re facing.”

Mr. Adams suggested that any problems associated with DocGo in Albany appeared to be limited to a few workers.

“When you have thousands of employees, are you going to find one or two that’s going to do something wrong?” he said. “Yes, you are.”

DocGo officials said on Monday night that the “subcontractor employees in question are no longer employed at the emergency sites,” adding that the firm will begin to evaluate new security vendors for its sites upstate.

Local officials in areas where DocGo has sent busloads of asylum seekers have expressed frustration with the company’s performance, and migrant advocates say DocGo has spread misinformation about migrants’ ability to work in New York.

Mayor Kathy Sheehan of Albany said she was frustrated with a lack of communication from DocGo and found it “troubling” that representatives of the contractor had provided documents to asylum seekers claiming they were “eligible for employment” as independent contractors.

“We’re talking about millions and millions and millions of dollars that are being provided to fund this work,” Ms. Sheehan said. “And I want to understand who’s responsible for auditing this, overseeing it, verifying what’s being done and ensuring that these taxpayer dollars that are being spent on these efforts are actually doing good as opposed to causing harm.”

At the news conference, Mr. Adams’s main message on the migrant crisis was focused on its impact on New York City. The mayor has criticized the Biden administration for not doing more to help, and Mr. Adams called again on Monday for federal changes allowing migrants to work legally.

The Legal Aid Society and the Coalition for the Homeless criticized the mayor's handling of the crisis and said that allowing migrants to sleep on the streets was “heartbreaking and maddening.”

“Denying new arrivals placement and forcing people to languish on local streets is cruel and runs afoul of a range of court orders and local laws,” the groups said in a joint statement.

Emma G. Fitzsimmons is the City Hall bureau chief, covering politics in New York City. She previously covered the transit beat and breaking news. More about Emma G. Fitzsimmons

Jay Root is an investigative reporter based in Albany, N.Y. More about Jay Root