Mayor Adams Says Migrant Influx Will Cost New York City $12 Billion

For a year now, Mayor Eric Adams has been sounding the alarm about a humanitarian crisis like few New York City has seen before, as tens of thousands of migrants arrive from the southern border.

On Wednesday, he made yet another plea for federal help and cited a staggering new cost estimate: $12 billion to house and care for the newcomers over the course of three years.

By way of comparison, the city’s most recent annual budget is $107 billion. This year, the mayor said, the city will spend more on migrants than the annual budgets of the Fire, Parks and Sanitation Departments combined.

The city could have more than 100,000 migrants in homeless shelters by 2025, the mayor said, about twice the number of newcomers who are currently living in the city’s homeless shelters.

City officials had previously projected that it would cost $4 billion through the next fiscal year to process and care for the migrants who have arrived in the city since the spring of 2022. Of the 96,000 new arrivals, more than 50,000 are staying in homeless shelters, the city has said.

Officials said they had raised the estimate as migrants continued to arrive in the city by the thousands.

“If we don’t get the support we need, New Yorkers could be left with a $12 billion bill,” Mr. Adams said in a speech from City Hall. “While New York City will continue to lead, it’s time the state and federal government step up.”

Mr. Adams repeated a call he has made many times over the last year: asking the federal government to declare a state of emergency, provide emergency aid and create a “decompression” strategy that would slow the flow of migrants to cities like New York. He also called on President Biden to give migrants work authorizations.

The mayor added that Gov. Kathy Hochul should develop a plan to help distribute arriving migrants throughout the state, to ease the burden on the city’s shelter system.

“We need additional resources now,” the mayor said, adding that the city was running out of “money, appropriate space and personnel” to properly care for the migrants.

For nearly a year, Mr. Adams has been saying that the shelter system is at its breaking point, and he has made concerted efforts to stop migrants from coming to New York. Three weeks ago, New York began distributing fliers at the southern border telling migrants that living in the city is expensive and that there is no guarantee they will receive help should they come, even though the city is required to house those who ask.

The mayor also instituted a rule requiring single adult migrants to reapply for shelter every 60 days. And he asked a judge to relieve the city of some of its legal obligations to guarantee people shelter.

The city is currently housing 107,900 people in shelters, including 56,600 migrants, according to Anne Williams-Isom, the deputy mayor for health and human services — by far the most ever recorded.

The arrival of migrants, including a recent influx of families with children, has overwhelmed the city’s shelter system, Ms. Williams-Isom said. Between July 24 and 30, 2,300 migrants arrived in the city, she said.

In an effort to house the newcomers, the city has opened 194 sites, including 13 humanitarian relief centers, which are operated by the public hospital system. Officials said they had reviewed 3,000 sites as potential places to house migrants.

The system has faltered in the past — last year, some homeless families were forced to stay in an intake office overnight, instead of being immediately moved into shelters. But it broke down completely last week after the city’s main intake center, operated by a company that used to provide Covid testing for the city, began turning people away.

About 200 migrants, mostly men, many from Africa, slept on the sidewalk outside the Roosevelt Hotel, around the corner from Grand Central Terminal. Last Thursday, after the Legal Aid Society wrote to the judge who is hearing the city’s request to waive the shelter guarantee, notifying her that the city was violating the migrants’ right to shelter, the city found beds for all of them.

City officials used the moment to renew their pleas for more financial help from the state and federal governments.

“When the doors are closing in Denver, when the system is full in Chicago, people say, ‘Let’s go to New York City because we know that New York City will provide migrants with food and shelter and the things that they need,’” Ms. Williams-Isom said last week.

Some migrants that were served by DocGo, the company that now oversees the Roosevelt Hotel intake center, have said they were lied to about the resources they would receive. They said the company, which is under a $432 million no-bid contract with the city to provide case management, medical care, food, transportation, lodging and security, made false promises that it would help them find work and assist in their asylum cases.

Andy Newman contributed reporting.