Mayor Eric Adams called Friday for Gov. Kathy Hochul to immediately take 500 migrants off his hands — and warned it won’t be his last request of the escalating crisis.
Adams said he submitted an “emergency mutual aid request” to the state for help “beginning this weekend” in housing the flood of migrants who’ve overwhelmed the city’s shelter system.
“We are at our breaking point. Based off our projections, we anticipate being unable to continue sheltering arriving asylum seekers on our own,” he said.
Adams acknowledged that his move — which came after Hochul failed to even mention the migrant crisis in her “State of the State” speech Tuesday — was “reserved only for dire emergencies.”
But Hizzoner, who last week declared there was “no more room at the inn,” said the city was now “seeing more people arrive than we have ever seen.”
An average of more than 400 migrants appeared in the Big Apple “each day this last week,” he said, “with 835 asylum seekers arriving on one single day alone, the largest single-day arrival we’ve seen to date.”
Mayor Eric Adams has had enough, and submitted an “emergency mutual aid request” to the state for help. Paul Martinka“All this is pushing New York City to the brink,” Adams said. “Our initial request is for shelter to accommodate 500 asylum seekers, but, as New York City continues to see numbers balloon, this estimate will increase as well.”
City Hall said Hochul was welcome to try to house the migrants inside the city or to relocate them elsewhere in the state.
In his statement, Adams said the city had “opened 74 emergency shelters and four humanitarian relief centers at breakneck speed, and done this almost entirely on our own.”
The city anticipates more migrants to arrive even though they do not have the bandwidth to help the newcomers. G.N.Miller/NYPostHochul’s office didn’t immediately return a request for comment.
As of Wednesday, the city was housing about 26,700 of the 39,500 migrants who’ve arrived in the Big Apple since the spring, according to the latest official figures.
One of the relief centers is located at the Row NYC hotel near Times
Square, where a whistleblower this week told The Post that “almost a ton” of food was getting thrown out daily because the migrants there refused to eat it.
Gov. Kathy Hochul has not been active in helping New York City find shelter for the migrants. AP/ Hans PenninkOn Thursday, Adams pledged to investigate and stop the waste, saying, “People may have a different cultural taste for certain food. We can’t do that. We can only provide nutrition, food for people.”
