‘Overburdened’: Two neighborhoods in Queens bear brunt of new asylum seeker shelters

Two community board districts in Queens have more shelters than any other in the city, and locals and elected officials are trying to make up for a lack of resources. File photo by Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office

By Ryan Schwach

Two neighborhoods in Queens are home to a large percentage of the city’s migrant shelters and while locals say they are happy to help amid the crisis, they also want the city and other neighborhoods to step up.

Two community board districts in Queens have a disproportionate number of migrant shelters run by the city’s Department of Homeless Services, according to data first reported by the outlet City & State.

Now, those communities – Community Board 1 in Western Queens and Community Board 12 in Southeast Queens – say they are starting to feel the impact.

“We are getting additional people, but we're not getting any additional services,” said Yvonne Reddick, the district manager for CB12, which includes the neighborhoods of Jamaica, Hollis, St. Albans, Springfield Gardens, Baisley Park, Rochdale Village and South Jamaica. “Of course, it is unfair, because they're putting them wherever they can get space.”

For the most part, city officials say shelters are being placed where space is available.

Both CB1 and CB12 are home to a large number of budget hotels due to their proximity to the city’s two airports. However, that has resulted in large concentrations of shelters in these specific neighborhoods, according to city data.

Queens as a whole has 66 of the 161 DHS shelters in the five boroughs, or about 40 percent, excluding shelters run by other city agencies

The city has defended their shelter placements as asylum seekers continue to seek refuge in the city.

“New York City has led the nation in managing this national humanitarian crisis, with more than 184,000 migrants coming to our city seeking care in the last two years, and, already, more than 120,000 of them have been able to take the next steps in their journeys thanks to our hard work,” said a City Hall spokesperson.

“We have opened more than 215 emergency shelters in response to this crisis, but have evaluated thousands of sites for use across the city, and we have utilized every viable option our city has to offer,” the spokesperson added. “As we have repeatedly said, we are simply out of good options to continue sheltering tens of thousands of migrants with hundreds more continuing to arrive and ask for shelter every single day.”

Forty-four of Queens’ 66 shelters are in CB12 and CB 1, which includes Long Island City and Astoria, alone. CB12 has 24 shelters, and CB1 has 20 DHS shelters – the district with the third-most shelters citywide has 10. Several districts in Queens, mainly in Central Queens, have none at all.

Officials in Western Queens feel as though that lack of even distribution is starting to harm both the community and the migrants being placed there.

“They should be evenly distributed, and that's what the mayor says all the time – equal distribution,” said Councilmember Julie Won, who represents the areas of District 1 where most of the shelters reside. “Clearly the data shows that that is not how this has been distributed at all.”

“As you can tell by the number of shelters that I have in my district, those are all hotels that are our budget hotels that were built with this purpose, and they were able to do it willy-nilly without any community consent,” Won said.

Won argued that the inundation in communities like hers comes from a lack of planning from the city as they met the massive influx of asylum seekers in the last year.

“I think they're just scrambling to open up shelters anywhere they could get a contract without really thinking about how it's going to impact communities or how you're going to make it equitable, how you're going to resource these communities, if you're going to overburden them,” she said. “Nor are they doing anything to fix it.”

The city has long pressed state and federal partners for more funding to manage the migrant crisis. However, those calls have mostly gone unanswered, they say. The lack of funding has trickled down to the migrants, Won said.

According to Won, migrants in hotel buildings are given poor quality food, less than ideal living conditions and the city’s recently imposed 30- and 60-day time limits for migrants living in shelters has destabilized the education their kids are receiving.

Won said that the limited resources are also beginning to affect other social services in the district.

“I haven't received a dime from the mayor for any of these migrant shelters,” she said. “The mayor [proposed to] cut funding from food pantries. My lines at Queensbridge Houses, and Ravenswood houses for food…are getting longer, not shorter.”

Both communities in CB1 and CB12 where the migrant shelters are concentrated are home to historically underserved Black and brown communities, which Won said was no coincidence.

“Another sign of inequity and racism is that all of these shelters are next to Black and brown communities and NYCHA’s, not in white, wealthy communities, but in Black and brown poor communities,” she said. “And when you do that, then you have scarce resources being fought over like free food. It leads to violence.”

Queens Councilmember Julie Won says her district, which has the most migrant shelters of any in the city, needs more funding from the city as the community faces the role of sheltering asylum seekers. File photo by Gerardo Romo/NYC Council Media Unit 

Further South, CB12’s councilmembers, Nantasha Williams and Council Speaker Adrienne Adams stopped short of being critical of the city’s response and said that their communities have large numbers of hotels which has led to the placing, but also acknowledged that more needs to be done to help maintain resources and services.

“Amidst a dire housing crisis with a shortage of homes, we recognize the challenge of providing shelter for tens of thousands of people seeking asylum in a short period of time,” said a spokesperson for the speaker. “It's also important to note that parts of Southeast Queens are home to a large number of hotels, which has driven the high rate of shelters being sited in the area.”

“The disproportionate siting of shelters has been a longtime challenge for many communities, including the neighborhoods Speaker Adams represents in Southeast Queens,” the spokesperson added. “Since her time serving as Chair of Queens Community Board 12, Speaker Adams has spoken for years about the need for the City to comply with fair share requirements to ensure City services and facilities are distributed throughout the city equitably. It also remains critical for our city to continue working towards a greater focus on stable, permanent housing than temporary shelter.”

Williams recently told City & State that she would “stop short [of being] extremely critical because I do know, unfortunately, it is a crisis.

“In certain communities you just have more hotels than other communities, and that has been primarily the main facility that these shelters are sited in,” she told the outlet. “But I do believe, as much as we can, we need to really address the fair siting issue, and we need to create a long-term plan for moving folks out of these hotels, and/or creating permanent housing.”

Though Queens has taken in a large number of migrants, some say that the World’s Borough is just living up to its name.

“Everyone is working and doing their best,” said Reddick.

In CB1, recently-elected board chair Evie Hantzopoulus said members of the community have more than stepped up to help migrants despite the lack of resources.

“I feel overall people have really tried to be welcoming and supportive and figure out what it is that folks need,” she told the Eagle. “There’s been lots of drives for coats, or clothing for different kinds of material goods that people may need who are coming here.”

“I'm really heartened by just how people have been stepping up,” she added.