Homeless advocates on Wednesday blasted New York City officials for allowing hundreds of migrants to wait hours in freezing temperatures for new shelter placements and said it was an “egregious breach” of the city’s legal obligation to provide temporary shelter beds to those who ask for them.
“The troubling and unnecessary scene at the East Village reticketing site is reminiscent of the deplorable conditions that our clients were forced to endure in the sweltering heat outside of the Roosevelt Hotel this past summer — one which drew international shock — and the city must immediately rectify this situation without further delay,” the Legal Aid Society and the Coalition for the Homeless said in a joint statement.
Hundreds of adult migrants evicted from city shelters due to a recently enacted 30-day limit on their stays have spent all week lining up outside a former Catholic school in the East Village, waiting to snag another shelter placement. Many were told there were no available beds and were sent to a waiting room in the Bronx — where they had to sleep on the floor — before returning to the East Village site the next day. Several migrants told Gothamist this week they had arrived at the site as early as 4 a.m. to try to beat the expected line.
On Wednesday, a handful of newcomers said they had slept outside in 20- and 30-degree temperatures, despite an official code blue weather emergency, to save their spot in the line and ensure they could get a bed the next day.
“It’s not that we want to be here, but we want to make the process faster and stop wasting our time,” said Misael Garcia, 30, who slept on the sidewalk, wrapped in blankets and cardboard boxes, with his two brothers and a friend.
He said staff at the former St. Brigid school, where migrants are queuing up, told them to go to the Bronx, but the migrants refused. “To accept that is to accept another day making this line,” Garcia said in Spanish.
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