Jul. 11, 2023 By Ben Brachfeld
The city is establishing two new migrant relief centers at a Queens hotel and a converted Brooklyn warehouse, Mayor Eric Adams announced on Tuesday.
The first new humanitarian emergency response and relief center (HERRC) will open Tuesday at the Crowne Plaza Hotel near John F. Kennedy Airport, and will have capacity for 330 families with children. In a couple weeks, the city will also open a new HERRC at 47 Hall St., in Clinton Hill, with capacity for 1,400 adults.
“The transition of these two emergency respite sites to humanitarian relief centers will provide, when combined, thousands of individuals with a range of services and help them reach their final destinations,” Mayor Adams said in a statement. “New York City is doing more than any other city or state to respond to this crisis, but we need others to step up and do their part as well.”
Both sites have been operating as “emergency respite” shelters, which are intended for more temporary stays for migrants.
The HERRCs will be the thirteenth and fourteenth of their kind opened by the city since tens of thousands of migrants began arriving in the city en masse last year. The city now has 52,000 migrants in its care at about 180 shelters of various types.
The surge of migrants arriving in the city has blown a hole in the city’s budget and pushed the city’s shelter population to over 80,000 people, the highest numbers ever recorded.
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