Groups of migrants slept in small buses parked on the street in Midtown on Saturday night after they were turned away from the city’s intake center at the Roosevelt Hotel.
Officials said there wasn’t enough space in the center, which caused long lines of asylum seekers to form outside over the weekend as they waited to find a bed in the city’s cramped shelter system.
The buses — which resemble “dollar vans” and fit about 15 people — first appeared over the weekend to give migrants waiting outside the hotel a break from a heat wave that hit the city. They soon turned into places to sleep overnight.
Angel Antonio Sevarino, 24, from Venezuela, on Sunday said he’s spent two days since arriving in New York waiting to for help at the intake center. He slept on a bus the night before, which he said is still an improvement from the life he left behind. He said he fled Venezuela due to political persecution.
“Basically, this process isn’t fast,” Sevarino said in Spanish. “We have to stay calm, remain good. This is still a better situation that we’re in right now.”
Some of the people who slept on the buses – mostly single men – could be seen periodically leaving the vehicles on Sunday morning to either wait in line again or stretch their legs. One man asked for directions to the closest currency exchange while another pair went into a nearby coffee shop to charge their cell phones.
The capacity problems at the Roosevelt Hotel were the latest turn in a crisis that’s worsened over the last year. Officials continue to struggle to find enough space to accommodate thousands of migrants arriving in New York City, which has a “right to shelter” rule that guarantees shelter beds to any homeless person. Mayor Eric Adams is challenging the rule in court.
Some migrants in the city have been taken upstate in recent weeks, and some who were unable to find shelter were forced to take matters into their own hands.
The lines outside the Roosevelt Hotel —…
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