City to open asylum seeker housing in Long Island City hotel
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The Wingate by Wyndham Hotel in Long Island City will become the seventh Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Center for asylum seekers in New York City and the first in Queens. Photo via Google Maps
By Ryan Schwach
In an effort to combat the ongoing migrant crisis, Mayor Eric Adams announced Wednesday that a hotel in Long Island City would begin housing and offering social services to some of the over 45,000 asylum seekers who arrived in the city in the past year.
The Wingate by Wyndham Hotel, located at 38-70 12th Street in LIC, will open up 144 rooms and will become the seventh “Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Center” to open to aid the effort to house and connect migrants with services.
A release from City Hall says that the Wingate site will “provide [asylum seekers] with a range of services, in addition to ensuring they can reach their final desired destination if it is not New York City.”
“New York City is caring for more asylum seekers than any other city in the United States,” said Adams in a press release. “As the number of asylum seekers who have moved through our intake process in the last 10 months has now surpassed the total number of people who were in the city’s shelter system when I took office, it’s clear that New York City is in dire need of more support from our federal partners.”
“We continue to provide more support to arriving asylum seekers than any other city in the nation, treating people with care and compassion, and this seventh humanitarian relief center will help us continue to do that work,” he added.
The relief center – the seventh in the city, and first in Queens – comes in addition to 85 hotels and emergency shelters that have been utilized to help temporarily house the migrants.
Councilmember Julie Won, who’s 26th Council District includes the new Long Island City site, said that her office was not consulted, but was notified at 11 a.m. on Wednesday prior the mayor’s announcement.
“They never give us any heads up about where they will be located,” Won told the Eagle Wednesday evening. “We're never given a warning until the day of or, maybe if we’re lucky, 24 hours. There's not a lot of transparency there.”
The Western Queens lawmaker said that there are nearly 30 shelters in her district housing asylum seekers, and many have been placed in low-income communities that are already struggling for resources.
“We always hear lofty visions about making sure that there's equity, that there is equal distribution sharing the burden,” she said. “But if you look at…white, wealthy neighborhoods in the city, [or that] you will find in Queens, some of them have zero shelters.”
On top of the sheer number of shelters that have had to take in migrants to deal with the crisis, many of them, at least in Won’s district, are struggling to provide necessary services.
In December, Won and New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams blasted the Adams administration after 26-year-old John Ortega, who had recently come to New York City with his family from Venezuela, committed suicide. Ortega, who was among some of the first migrants to arrive in New York City last summer, was having difficulty securing a job and living an independent life.
“They were supposed to offer mental health services and they didn't,” she said. “I get Department of Health and Human Services doctor's notes about children who are having rapid weight loss, diarrhea, stomach issues, because they're not being fed enough and the quality of food is so bad kids are getting sick.”
The strategy of using pre-existing shelters and buildings to house migrants is a shift from the city’s original tactic of building make-shift HERCS, but Won argues it isn’t a sustainable plan.
“The hotel shelters are not a long term solution – it's a temporary Band Aid,” she said. “They really need to actually have supportive housing….We also need to expedite work papers. They need expedited work first so that they can go to work because a lot of these people are looking to work. I get asked all the time, ‘Can you help me find a job?’”
The opening of this center comes just hours after Mayor Adams told state legislators in Albany that the migrant crisis could cost the city up to $4 billion and requested more assistance from the federal government, as well as additional funding from Governor Kathy Hochul, a request Won echoed.
“We need our federal government to step in to actually provide resources and funding and be real partners with us,” she said.
The Eagle asked City Hall when the site would officially open to migrants, but did not get an answer before press time.
