NYC looking to upstate cities and possibly SUNY campuses to house asylum seekers
NEW YORK -- As several thousand additional asylum seekers arrive in the city, officials are making plans to relocate them, possibly to several upstate cities.
To say the city is running out of space for the thousands of asylum seekers who want to make the Big Apple their home is an understatement. CBS2 has learned 2,200 arrived last week, increasing the total to 72,000.
And that's on top of the city's regular homeless shelter population.
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"When we came into this administration, I think we were a little over 45,000 people who were in our care. Right now, we are at 95,000 people in our care. The city continues to do whatever we need to do to support the asylum seekers, but we have reached a point where the system is buckling," Deputy Mayor Anne Williams-Isom said.
Which is why the city is finalizing plans to send some of the asylum seekers to Buffalo, where the county executive says they would be welcome. Several buses have already been sent to the Albany area, where officials are asking for a pause, something on the agenda during a conference call Wednesday with local officials to better coordinate the arrivals.
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"I can imagine that people are probably used to having months and months to plan for something like this. We don't have months and months to plan for it," Williams-Isom said.
As more people arrive, the city is just days away from opening the former Lincoln Correctional Center in Harlem as a temporary facility.
So far, the city has opened 157 shelters and nine emergency reception centers, and more sites are on the drawing board.
"We currently have close to 750 prospects under review, or in the process of being reviewed, as we look for other places to put people," Emergency Management Commissioner Zach Iscol said.
Williams-Isom, Iscol and Social Services Commissioner Molly Park echoed Mayor Eric Adams in calling on the state and federal governments to step in.
"We really do need help. It should not just be on the shoulders of New York City," Iscol said.
This as the city is asking a judge to modify its 40-year-old right-to-shelter law, a move being opposed by the Legal Aid Society and homeless advocates.
Gov. Kathy Hochul has held out the possibility of using 1,500 dormitory beds at SUNY campuses in Buffalo, Stony Brook and Albany, but she says they would only be a temporary summer solution.