New York to Cut 10,000 Migrant Beds but Open New Shelter in the Bronx

The Hall Street shelter in Brooklyn, which drew numerous complaints, is among several that will soon close in New York.

New York City officials plan to eliminate 10,000 beds for migrants, including closing one of the largest shelters in Brooklyn that had housed up to 4,000 people and drew quality-of-life and crime complaints from the nearby residential neighborhood.

The shelter closures, announced Friday, come as the number of migrants arriving in New York City has continued to decrease and the number of asylum seekers being housed by the city is at the lowest level in 18 months.

The city has seen the arrival of 229,000 migrants since the spring of 2022. But it is now housing just 51,000 migrants, down from a high of more than 69,000 last January. New York City plans to close at least 46 migrant shelters by June, according to city officials, a move that they project will save billions of dollars.

Late last year, the city announced that it would close the sprawling tent shelter that houses thousands of migrants on Randall’s Island, as well as another tent complex that housed families on Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn.

The latest round of closures included three large humanitarian emergency response and relief centers — the Hall Street shelter in the Clinton Hill section of Brooklyn; and the Watson and Stewart Hotels in Manhattan — as well as the Brooklyn Vybe Hotel in Flatbush.

But even with the decline in migrant arrivals, the closures meant that the city would need to find someplace else to house the thousands of people who had been living in the tent complexes.