Gothamist, Arya Sundaram, Feb 24, 2025

The end of New York City’s era of migrant megashelters is drawing nearer.

The last tent camp for migrants, which comprises 1,300 beds on the grounds of the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens, will close by June, Mayor Eric Adams announced Feb. 14. In January, workers dismantled a nearly 2,000-bed tent camp for migrant families on Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn. A 3,000-bed tent camp on Randall’s Island has been fully vacated and will shut down by the end of the month. And another 2,400-bed shelter in Clinton Hill is also due to close by June.

And a 2,900-person shelter and intake center at the Roosevelt Hotelin Midtown, a symbol of New York City’s migrant crisis, will also soon close, Adams announced on Monday.

New York City constructed the sprawling sites in mid-2023 in the midst of a humanitarian crisis during which more than 232,000 shelter-seeking migrants arrived since spring 2022 and quickly overwhelmed the city’s traditional shelter system. But as fewer asylum-seekers arrive, New York City has closed or announced plans to close nine out of 10 shelters housing over 1,000 people.

These makeshift accommodations have been hypervisible symbols of the immigration surge under the Biden administration, and of the city’s ongoing struggle to manage the influx. The sites and the newcomers have stoked controversy as neighbors complain of lost public space, crowding, excess trash in the streets and other quality-of-life concerns.

The era of the megashelter isn’t entirely over. Several large sites remain at hotels in Midtown, and another 2,200-bed shelter for men has opened in the South Bronx, mainly to accommodate migrants displaced from other sites. But the planned closure of dozens of migrant shelters — 36 thus far — marks “a significant milestone,” said Molly Schaeffer, director of the Mayor’s Office of Asylum Seeker Operations, in a statement.

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