A city pilot program has spent up to $600,000 to move migrant families out of New York City's overcrowded shelter system, officials confirmed Monday.
A refugee exit assistance pilot program launched in December paid 150 refugee families up to $4,000 each to help them find housing, an effort to free up space in a shelter system already overcrowded with more than 65,000 asylum seekers.
“The city is taking every step to implement innovative, cost-effective solutions to help recently arrived asylum seekers living in shelters make the next step,” a spokesperson for the city's Department of Social Services said in a statement to The Washington Post.
Officials said the one-time grants will be paid out through an agency contracted by the city and are aimed at migrant families with pregnant women who have already found a new place to live.
Of the 150 families who participated in the program, only one has returned to the shelter system, city officials said.
In the pilot program, First reported by Gothamistrequires the 12 nonprofits currently working with the city to track their funds and requires receipts from landlords, movers and other parties involved.
The money will not be paid directly to the migrants, officials said.
Up to $1,000 of the grant money will be used for household items.
The move is the latest desperate effort to ease the burden of a migration crisis in New York City's five boroughs, where more than 210,000 asylum seekers have poured into the city from the U.S.-Mexico border since spring 2022.
City officials said taxpayers have spent more than $5 billion since the crisis began, yet more than 65,000 migrants remain trapped in shelters.
Two huge facilities built to accommodate the overflow of refugees — a tent city on Randall's Island and a former federal airfield at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn — have angered local residents.
City officials said the testing program could be a more cost-effective way to address the crisis.
“Over the past seven months, 150 families have benefited from this pilot program as they have been removed from shelters,” a DSS spokesperson said. “As we evaluate the success of the pilot program and the feasibility of scaling it up, we hope to help more families take that next step.”
