We’re updating our previous reporting to reflect the current situation regarding local schools preparing to host migrants at their facilities.
After the office of Mayor Eric Adams announced that it would utilize several school gyms as temporary housing for an influx of incoming migrants arriving in the city, it was reported today that the Adams administration would be reversing course and moving migrants to a new location, forgoing the use of school gyms.
While shelters were in the process of setting up at several Brooklyn schools, including three in Williamsburg, only PS 188 in Coney Island had actually hosted any migrants, who have since been moved to a new site in Manhattan.
However, other reports have emerged indicating that while the program will not proceed as initially indicated, the Adams administration has not entirely ruled out the possibility of utilizing school space in the future, if there’s a surge in demand.
During a press conference today, Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services Anne Williams-Isom refrained from calling the news a “reversal of strategy.”
“I’m not reversing strategy, the strategy was to have short term sites for emergency respite,” Williams-Isom said. “We always meant that people would move to another site when that became available, we are very consistent with our strategy and our planning and continue to do that so I can assure that nobody sleeps on the streets of NYC.”
“Our plan has always been to have emergency respite sites only serve migrants for a very short period of time and only when the influx into our city is overwhelming,” Adams press secretary, Fabian Levy, told Greenpointers. “Migrants flow in and out of these sites as other more suitable space becomes available, and they have and will continue to be used as a last resort. As the mayor has continued to say, everything is on the table when it comes to placement of asylum seekers, and, sadly, every city service will be affected.”
A reminder that this is an ongoing, developing story that we will update as we learn more. There’s a lot of unknowns at the moment, but our commitment to providing the most accurate information to our readers is not one of them.