By Forum Staff
Mayor Eric Adams on Friday announced the City will soon close six additional emergency sites dedicated to sheltering and caring for asylum seekers– including the Creedmoor Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Center, the last of the City’s large tent-based emergency response shelters.
Based in Queens Village, on the State-run Creedmoor Mental Health Hospital campus, the facility was one of several unique tent-based structures brought online – including similar facilities on Randall’s Island and at Floyd Bennett field – to handle the unprecedented influx of asylum seeking migrants to Gotham. At its height, the Creedmoor Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Center sheltered more than 1,200 migrants.
Building off of the previously announced schedule of closures, the city will shutter six more sites by June 2025, bringing the total number of closures between June 2024 and June 2025 to 52. The administration is making final determinations on what new sites to close and hopes to have those sites finalized in the coming days.
The ability to soon shutter operations at Creedmoor, along with the five other sites announced on Friday, brings the total number of closures between June 2024 and June 2025 to 52– a direct result of the federally-abandoned City’s efforts to mitigate the crisis and help asylum seekers take the next steps in their journeys.
According to Adams, there are currently less than 45,000 migrants receiving city shelter services, down from a high of 69,000 in January of 2024 and out of the more than 231,000 that have arrived in the Big Apple seeking City services since the spring of 2022. The City’s efforts have directly resulted in approximately 24,000 fewer asylum seekers in the city’s care on a day-to-day basis, Hizzoner said.
“There was never a playbook for this unprecedented response to a humanitarian crisis in our city; and no other municipality had to deal with the scale and burden of more than 230,000 people arriving with little more than the clothes on their backs and hope,” Adams added. “Because of the decisions we have made and the policies we have implemented, including opening up our tent based humanitarian relief centers and advocating for changes to national border policies, our administration has effectively moved us to the opposite side of the mountain we were forced to climb. The fact that within a span of year we will soon be closing 52 sites and shuttering the last of the tent-based facilities show both our continued progress and our continued commitment to effectively care for those who are still within our system and the communities who have supported them during their journeys.”
Mayor’s Office of Asylum Seeker Operations Executive Director Molly Schaeffer noted, “We could not have been successful without our local communities taking on the powerful responsibility we asked of them. As we navigate the future of our response, we continue to find creative ways to meet the needs of our guests and look to partner with the communities they now call home to do so.”
