Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso is calling on city and state officials to make available tens of thousands of vacant market-rate apartments to house homeless New Yorkers — thereby making room in shelters to simultaneously address the migrant and homelessness crisis.
Reynoso, at a press conference at Brooklyn Borough Hall Wednesday, urged Governor Kathy Hochul, Mayor Eric Adams and the New York City Council to make this proposal a reality, as well two others he put forward.
The borough president pointed to three solutions that could transition migrants and unhoused New Yorkers into housing. The city is currently overwhelmed with unhoused individuals, with more than 41,000 migrants currently in the city’s care, contributing to the 80,000 individuals in city-operated shelters. The majority in those shelters are families with children.
Reynoso said the temporary shelters at schools are “not ideal” and “not what we want at all.” He referred to his two young sons, and as a father, wanting them to have access to every educational and recreational resource available to them. He said creative solutions are now needed to support the city’s most vulnerable people and its newest arrivals.
“The people are not the crisis — homelessness and our defunded city services are the crisis,” Reynoso said. “I call on the City Council, Mayor Adams, and Governor Hochul to take legal steps toward empowering our government to get those who have been stuck in our shelter system the longest into the tens of thousands of apartments that sit vacant and ensuring the communities outside of New York City contribute to the greater good as well.”
Reynoso first urged the New York City Council to pass legislation that would direct Mayor Adams to “use government power to solve the homelessness crisis through the private sector.”
This legislation would categorize the migrants as an emergency under administrative code, and direct Adams to lease market apartments…
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