Some of New York’s poorest zip codes are bearing the greatest brunt of the city’s migrant crisis, including the borough of Queens, which has more shelters than any other in the city’s five boroughs, according to internal data that has not been made public but was obtained by The Washington Post.
Long Island City is home to a staggering 23 government-run migrant shelters, or 12 percent of the 193 operating in New York City, according to data compiled by city officials from a confidential list of shelters used by the city.
“The city dropped a bomb on us,” said Danny Beauford, a Queensbridge Houses resident whose 11101 ZIP code also includes the 24th shelter in neighboring Astoria. [migrants] “They are occupying it. They are taking over the car park with 8,000 scooters. They are being rude and urinating in front of everyone. If they do that even once, we will go to prison for a long time.”
Three of the top five ZIP codes with the most shelters are in Jamaica, Queens, East New York and parts of Brooklyn. In the poorest regions In New York City, the median income is just under $37,300, according to Data Commons.
A Post analysis of an internal list of active shelters being used by city agencies as of June 25 found:
- Queens is home to 70 (36%) of the 193 shelters currently housing the 65,300 immigrants under the city’s care, with the other 49 in Manhattan, 44 in Brooklyn, 25 in the Bronx, and 5 on Staten Island.
- Jamaica is not far behind LIC, with 13 evacuation centers in the 11435 zip code, which includes Jamaica and nearby Briarwood, and seven more in Jamaica’s 11434 zip code area.
- There are eight shelters in the 10036 zip code, which covers Midtown West Manhattan.
- There are six in 11207 East New York.
- 10467 (Williamsbridge, Bronx), 12206 (Bushwick and Williamsburg, parts of Brooklyn), and 11212 (Brownsville, Brooklyn) have five each.
Mayor Eric Adams’ office told The Post on Saturday that the number of shelters in the city now stands at 217, but did not say how many additional locations were being added.
Records show that none of the 193 New York City migrant shelters reviewed by The Washington Post are located in zip codes with the top five median incomes in the city, including TriBeCa, Battery Park City, the Financial District, other parts of Lower Manhattan and Lincoln Square.
The disparities are particularly stark in LIC, where around 20 shelters are clustered around two public housing estates.
But LIC’s neighboring zip code, 11109, home to some of the most expensive real estate in New York City and filled with high-rise buildings offering spectacular waterfront views of the Manhattan skyline, does not have a single shelter.
“Why are they sending everybody here?” wondered Shauanne Shields, one of the 7,000 residents of Queensbridge, the largest housing project in North America. “Send them to Fifth Avenue! Send them to Park Avenue, but they don’t.”
“Why send them somewhere where people are already living paycheck to paycheck?” said Shields, 56. “They’re not living paycheck to paycheck in Manhattan.”
As well as Queensbridge, this part of LIC is home to 4,000 social housing tenants at nearby Ravenswood House.
Residents of both New York City Housing Authority developments say their close proximity to LIC’s large shelter complex means low-income NYCHA tenants often have to compete with immigrants for vital services provided by the city and nonprofits.
Beauford, 36, of Queensbridge, said the lines at local food pantries to pick up healthy meals are “longer” than the historically long lines to pick up welfare checks.
“The people in the projects don’t even get food,” he said.[The migrants] They come early, tie their little cart to the gate to secure a spot, and then people from the project show up and ask, ‘Whose cart is this?'”
City Councilwoman Julie Wong (D-Queens), who represents the area, said the long lines at food pantries were the result of vendors under city contract supplying “spoiled” and “inedible” food to some shelters.
Local public schools are also stretched thin trying to educate young immigrants, who are far behind their peers, and Wong’s office’s requests to city hall for more “resources” to help accommodate new immigrants have routinely been ignored, the councillor added.
“These shelters are being set up in the poorest areas of the community,” she said.[The Adams administration] They need to be dispersed so they don’t negatively impact communities, especially low-income communities.”
About 80 percent of the shelters on the classified list, or 153, are former hotels, like The Roosevelt in Midtown, or other lodging facilities that are subsidized with taxpayer money.
Others include places of worship, recreation centers and a controversial makeshift “tent city” complex built to house 3,000 migrants on Randall’s Island, about 2,000 at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn and a facility built outside Creedmoor Psychiatric Hospital in Queens to hold another 1,000.
At least 84 facilities in New York City operated as migrant shelters across the five boroughs over the past two years but had closed as of two weeks ago, records show. At least three, including a former NYPD police academy building in Manhattan, are functioning as “overflow sites” to house migrants only if necessary.
Last year, Mayor Eric Adams put limits on how long new immigrants could stay in public shelters to rein in the ballooning tax burden for immigrant housing (about $2 billion out of a total of about $5 billion). Families must find permanent housing within 60 days, and single people are limited to 30 days, but if they can’t find anything, everyone can reapply to stay in the shelter.
The Adams administration has consistently refused media requests for the locations of migrant shelters, citing privacy concerns, instead revealing only the addresses of 15 designated “humanitarian emergency response relief centers” that provide a range of social services to asylum seekers, leaving the public to find the rest for themselves.
City Hall spokeswoman Liz Garcia said sites are prioritized based on how quickly they can be ready to house evacuees, adding that the city has closed some shelters as contracts with providers expired and continues to open new sites as needed.
“We continue to search for safe and viable sites across the five boroughs, but we are grateful to all the communities who have been willing to offer us temporary emergency sites,” she said.
“It’s clear that our efforts are working: we have helped over 65 per cent of the asylum seekers already in our care to take the next step and exit our shelter system towards self-sufficiency.”
Joan Arriola, a Republican city council member whose district of southern Queens is a base for migrant mothers who illegally peddle food and street peddlers on the highways, blamed the Biden administration for the immigration chaos.
“The illegal immigration crisis should never have gotten to the point where we were cramming people into every space we could,” Arriola said. “This is the result of massive mismanagement at the federal level, and working class people in Queens and Manhattan are now bearing the burden.”
Additional reporting by Matthew Sedacca and Claire Samstag
