Mayor Adams: City shelter system ‘nearing its breaking point’

With New York City expecting thousands more people to arrive each week, shelters are becoming increasingly crowded.

News 12 Staff

Sep 16, 2022, 9:03 AM

Updated 581 days ago

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With New York City expecting thousands more people to arrive each week, shelters are becoming increasingly crowded.  
A video taken in the lobby of the HRA Men’s Shelter in Manhattan shows a long line of men looking for a place to stay, with some of them sleeping on the floor.  
The man who took the video, Danilo Sobers, stays at the shelter and says 60 men went without beds.  
“You’re looking at the situation around you, everything in there is crowded,” said Sobers. “The elevator is crowded, the cooling room is crowded. Everywhere has people in it.” 
Sobers says this line appears nearly every night, and that recently more people started to get assigned to his room.  
The Legal Aid Society learned that those 60 men went without beds on Tuesday morning, and were also told that seven buses of migrants arrived that night.  
Legal Aid Society staff attorney Kathryn Kliff says long wait times to get placed in a shelter is not unusual, though the process is further strained with the city claiming thousands are arriving every week.  
The Department of Social Services provided a statement saying they “already provided shelter to thousands of recently arrived asylum-seekers, including hundreds [Tuesday] alone, and we continue to open emergency sites citywide.” 


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