(Bloomberg) -- New York City said it will close 25 migrant shelters after the number of asylum seekers being housed fell to the lowest point in more than a year.
Mayor Eric Adams said Tuesday that the shelters, including the controversial facility at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, will be shut by March. As of Oct. 31, there were 212 migrant shelters in New York City and elsewhere in the state housing 59,030 people.
“We’re going to continue looking for more sites to consolidate and close, and more opportunities to save taxpayer money, as we continue to successfully manage this response,” Adams said in a statement.
The move comes as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office after a campaign in which he vowed to order mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. While Adams has been critical of Trump’s plans, he said after the election that he would be open to collaborating with the president-elect on deporting repeat offenders of violent acts.
Floyd Bennett Field, which sits on federal land in Brooklyn, can house 2,000 people in tents. Migrant advocates including the Legal Aid Society and the Coalition for the Homeless welcomed the closure, saying in a statement that it was “was never an appropriate setting for families with children.” But the organizations acknowledged that the shelter’s closing may be disruptive for some families who will have to relocate.
The state, which was paying for the migrants in Floyd Bennett Field, will still reimburse the city for similar types of care at other sites. Since the spring of 2022, New York City has spent $6.65 billion on migrant care, including shelter, food and services, according to City Hall.
Other shelters that will be shut include a handful of hotels in Brooklyn and Queens, several dorms in uptown Manhattan and the shelter on Randall’s Island, which is set to close on Feb 28. Ten facilities in Albany and elsewhere in upstate New York will also close.
As of 2022, there were more than 400,000 undocumented immigrants estimated to be in New York City. Over the last 22 weeks, the number of migrants in shelters has been on the decline, and the city has been able to cut back on some initiatives that it took on when the migrant crisis peaked.
In November, the city ended a program that provided migrants staying in city-funded hotels with prepaid debit cards they could use to purchase food.
The city’s Asylum Application Help Center has helped complete nearly 87,000 applications for work authorization, temporary protected status and asylum. Over 70% of eligible adults in the city’s care either have received, or have applied for, work authorization, city officials said.
--With assistance from Laura Nahmias.
(Updates with work authorization in final paragraph. A previous version corrected the year 2002 to 2022 in the sentence about migrant costs.)
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