By Arya Sundaram, The Gothamist, Published Aug 15, 2023
A sprawling tent city for 1,000 migrants was set to open on Tuesday afternoon in the parking lot of a state psychiatric hospital campus in Queens.
New York City hospital system and emergency management leaders said they expected to welcome 100 migrants to the grounds of the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center by the evening.
The cluster of weatherized tents was erected in 10 days, and officials said there aren’t yet clear plans for how long they’ll be in place. Only single adult male migrants will be housed there. State leaders approved the use of the space and will foot the bill, city officials said during a tour of the site Tuesday.
City officials said they’ve struggled to process and place the influx of migrants, propping up more than 200 emergency shelter sites within the city and offering accommodations to some upstate — even amid legal disputes with communities that have tried to block them.
More than 150 new arrivals slept in line overnight outside the city’s main intake center for migrants late last month, a scene that caught the attention of national news outlets. Some migrants said they waited as long as five days outside the Roosevelt Hotel in midtown to register for help from the city.
“We’re here today because we’ve received help from the state,” Ted Long, senior vice president of Ambulatory Care and Population Health at the city’s hospital system, said at the Creedmoor site Tuesday. “The word for today is ‘collaboration,’ with New York state. And this facility is critically important to have more collaboration like that, so we never have to form a line again.”
Hundreds of new migrants have continued to arrive daily for the past few months, according to Fabien Levy, the city’s deputy mayor for communications. Some 60,000 are currently staying in the city’s care.
The pace of new arrivals is speeding up even as fewer migrants are crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.
Plans for the tent city spurred dueling protests, drawing hundreds of people this weekend. Some were in opposition to the plans, citing concerns about security and safety. A smaller rival group looking to welcome the newcomers also staged a counter-protest, Pix 11 reported.
Levy said while protestors are allowed to voice their opinions, they aren’t allowed to come on the property. He pointed to the security guards stationed on the premises 24 hours a day, and seven days per week.
“For those who are criticizing, we are out of good options. We are out of OK options. These are the only options left,” Levy said. “It’s a question of ‘Do you want people sleeping on the street, or do you want people sleeping on a cot?’”
In a massive tent at the Creedmoor site Tuesday, dozens of rows of head-to-toe brown cots lined the floor, and thermostats on the walls were set between 70 and 75 degrees. In a separate tent intended as a cafeteria, rows of plastic tables and chairs were set up facing a food buffet station with warming trays, refrigerators and packages of water bottles and Goldfish crackers.
Along the perimeter were several trailers with bathrooms. Some hyper-temporary congregate shelters across the city have contained just a few toilets for hundreds of residents, and one site went without any showers for weeks.
A Q43 bus stop is located on a nearby sidewalk feet away from the shelter entrance, but there isn’t much other public transportation near the site. The closest subway station, the Jamaica-179th Street station, is more than an hour’s walk away, and the closest Long Island Railroad station is about a 30-minute walk. Long said additional buses may be added.
Queens Borough President Donovan Richards has also called on the city to create a community advisory board to work with the city on plans for the migrant shelter on the Creedmoor campus. City officials could not immediately confirm on Tuesday’s tour if such a group would be created.
Separately, the city’s Empire State Development agency is leading a plan to redevelop the Creedmoor campus, and some residents are advocating for thousands of affordable housing units to be built on the property.