Mayor Eric Adams announced Oct. 12 a new Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Center designed specifically to provide aid to migrant families with children.
According to the mayor, the Center will be located at the Row hotel in Midtown Manhattan and is expected to serve about 200 families. Hizzoner charged that the hotel will be a touch point for arriving asylum seekers, helping people by immediately offering shelter, food, medical care, casework services, and more. The mayor also promises the facility will help ensure they can reach wherever they were originally headed, even if that is not the Big Apple.
This news comes as arriving migrants surpasses some 18,600, according to numbers released by City Hall Wednesday, stretching City resources thin during a time when the mayor has already dubbed a state of emergency. Not only that, more and more busses continue to arrive each day carrying the tired, huddled masses.
“As the numbers of asylum seekers entering New York City continues to increase without an end in sight, the city’s family-focused Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Center will soon open to serve families with children and provide them with the care and compassion they deserve. Our team will continue to work with these families and assess if they want to actually stay in New York City and, if not, help them get to their desired destinations,” Mayor Adams said. “This is not an everyday homelessness crisis, but a humanitarian crisis that requires a different approach, and these humanitarian emergency response centers will take on a multitude of looks with the similarities that they will all help triage and provide immediate support to arriving asylum seekers. We will continue to respond with care and compassion as we deal with this humanitarian crisis made by human hands.”
The announcement took some off-guard, however. Speaker Adrienne Adams appeared to discover the news of the Row hotel center along with the general public.
“We just got information on that so I can’t really expound on that, I’m still looking at that information now as we speak. I was not privy to this information,” she said on Wednesday afternoon.
Appearing irritated regarding the lack of communication, the speaker rebuked the mayor’s office for not informing her of the plans while also yielding to the unprecedented situation the city finds itself in.
“Is it okay with me? It’s never okay when you get no notice. But given the situation that we’re in now, in the crisis that we’re in now, we certainly understand that things happen,” Speaker Adams said.
In addition to the Row hotel announcement, the mayor’s office also confirmed that the Randall’s Island “Tent City” will be opening soon, however, they did not offer an exact date.
