NEW YORK — Migrant families were moved out of a midtown Manhattan hotel on Tuesday as part of Mayor Eric Adams’ plan to ease the pressure on New York City’s strained shelter system by imposing a 60-day limit on shelter stays.
The roughly 40 families that left Row NYC, in the heart of the city’s Theater District, are the first of scores of families that are expected to leave city shelters in the coming weeks. Some of those leaving on Tuesday immediately reapplied for beds, while others said they had managed to find more permanent accommodations outside of the system.
Adams, a Democrat, imposed the limit in October for homeless migrant families, saying the move was necessary to relieve a shelter system overwhelmed by asylum-seekers crossing the southern U.S. border.
Maria Quero, a 26-year-old from Venezuela who is nearly nine months pregnant, was among those standing outside the Row hotel Tuesday morning with her luggage and other personal effects in tow.
She said her plan was to head across town to the Roosevelt Hotel, another midtown accommodation that’s been repurposed as an intake center for arriving migrants. There, city officials say, migrant families could reapply for another 60-day stay in the shelter system.
“We have no idea what is going to happen there,” Quero said in Spanish as her husband, David Dominguez, gathered their belongings for the roughly 20-minute walk. “It’s very stressful. It gives me a lot of anxiety.”
The two, who arrived in the country six months ago and had been at the Row for five months, said they don’t have friends or family they can stay with if they can’t secure another city bed.
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