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As migrants sleep out in the cold after hitting city limits on how long they can stay in shelters, they are criticizing official efforts to get them off the street, saying they boil down to an iffy wait list.
“It’s bulls—,” Maikol Chavez said in Spanish, pointing to a red band on his wrist. The number 1209 — his number on a line to receive a shelter bed — was scrawled on it in black Sharpie.
“It’s fake,” Chavez, 26, continued. “It’s too difficult, because there are so many people. They’re right there, there are too many. They’re not letting anyone inside because there are so many people.”
Earlier this year, the Adams administration started giving single adult migrants in shelters 30-day notices — in languages including Arabic, French and Spanish — informing them they had to get out. Since then, the city has put them on a list to get back into shelter, with many of them lining up outside the St. Brigid School in the East Village to wait for a placement to open up. The line has grown within the past week and a half amid an influx of new arrivals.
For those who don’t get a spot, they’re directed to a Bronx building where they can spend the night, often ending up back on line in the East Village the next day.
Julie Powell
Around three dozen men slept outside the building on Sunday night, according to volunteers with EV Loves. (Julie Powell)
Mammad Mahmoodi is co-founder and executive director of EVLoves NYC, a non-profit that gives out meals to those who need them.
He said the 30-day notices recently increased and more and more people needed to be sheltered ahead of Thanksgiving weekend.
Every day, migrants had to start at the line anew. But then the city assigned wristbands to let them come back and take their places in the order in which they had arrived.
“It has slightly helped,” Mahmoodi said of the new system. “The number of people sleeping outside was a lot more … But still, the fact that at least 40 people were camping out last night, that says something.”
On Sunday night, around 40 migrants camped out outside the building, putting up layers of plastic over metal barricades on the sidewalk.
“The situation is also critical because we are in a season that is Christmas and is not the same as in other countries. Here the temperatures gets below zero,” Chavez said. “it is one thing for it to be cold outside and be here during the day. Later in the night, a person will not stand it because it gives you hypothermia.”
Chavez said he understands that life can be difficult — he walked through six countries and was mugged and nearly kidnapped on his way to New York. But his current situation, he said, feels unnecessarily cruel.
“It’s one thing to see the reality of life,” he observed. “Talking about what you see out here, the struggles, the perspective of being here. But it is another thing to live it. And the situation here is not just denigrating, it is humiliating.
“It is a whole thing, to do the asylum process now, because of legally being here. And they are not giving the benefits at least human in what fits the word you deserve.”
Those who don’t sleep close by get up very early in the morning to reach the line by around 5 a.m. in the hopes that being a little closer to the start of the queue will improve their changes of receiving a shelter bed.
Josh Goldfein, a lawyer with the Legal Aid Society who’s fighting the Adams administration in court over its attempt to undo parts of the city’s right to shelter, said migrants are likely to continue sleeping outside the re-ticketing center as long as the closest short-term shelter for them is in the Bronx.
“A major deterrent is that it’s all the way up in the Bronx,” he said.
Ponce Anthony, 34 and Daniel Hurtado, also 34, have been waiting for shelter for three days. They’ve elected to go back and forth from the Bronx site so far, but they say the sanitary conditions are bad — there aren’t any showers — and it’s very far from the East Village site.
They’ve been getting up around 2 a.m. to get back to the East Village site.
They haven’t been working while waiting for shelter and are now out of money. Hurtado hopped a turnstile to get to the East Village site on Sunday, but was caught by a police officer. Now, he’s facing a $100 fine he can’t afford and can’t work to pay up.
“We’re here now,” Hurtado said. “We might sleep here or go to the train station.”
Amid the migrant surge, the city has been offering all migrants a bus or plane ticket out of the Big Apple. Once they get the boot from their shelter beds, single adult migrants who opt to stay in the city are being directed to the East Village site.
“As the temperature starts to drop, we will continue to do our best to keep the line indoors and provide an indoor waiting room for migrants when the center is closed,” mayoral spokeswoman Kayla Mamelak said in a statement.
Mohamed Nema, 23, has been sleeping in nearby Tompkins Square Park since being kicked out of his shelter.
Josephine Stratman
Mohamed Nema, 23, has been sleeping in the street since being kicked out of his shelter.
Lacking a phone, he’s afraid of going to the Bronx since he’s not sure of being able to get back to the East Village line.
Speaking in Arabic, he lamented the declining temps and opined to The News that the city cannot control the current situation.
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Josephine Stratman, Chris Sommerfeldt
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