Mamdani orders city to close or renovate migrant shelters
The Roosevelt Hotel closed during the pandemic and became an emergency shelter center for asylum seekers. Image via WikiCommons
The city has 45 days to create a plan to close or renovate its emergency migrant shelters under a new executive order signed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Tuesday. The Departments of Social Services and Homeless Services (DHS), working with the Law Department, have until February 19 to create a plan to bring all emergency shelters into compliance with city law, including maximum capacity limits and requirements for cooking facilities in shelters housing families and children. Former Mayor Eric Adams suspended those rules through a series of emergency executive orders beginning in October 2022, as the city grappled with the arrival of tens of thousands of asylum seekers.
The new order immediately ends the suspension of a broad range of health and safety codes, building regulations, and land use rules that the city used to quickly open emergency shelters during the height of the migrant influx.
The Legal Aid Society and the Coalition for the Homeless applauded the mayor’s order in a joint statement, calling it “an encouraging step in the right direction.”
“Since the City is no longer experiencing an influx of new arrivals at the high levels seen over the past three years, under the prior administration’s own logic, a crisis framework is no longer appropriate or necessary, nor is it a substitute for a humane, durable housing and relocation strategy.”
At its peak in March 2024, the city’s migrant crisis saw waves of asylum seekers arrive across the five boroughs, with as many as 4,000 people recorded in a single week that January, according to the New York Post.
In response, Adams opened a network of emergency shelters in hotels, tent camps, and other temporary facilities, with the city operating 261 migrant shelters at the height of the crisis, Gothamist reported.
The number of asylum seekers began to decline in mid-2024 and has continued to fall since, allowing the city to close many of its former emergency shelters. One controversial facility at the former Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan, which temporarily housed more than 173,000 migrants since May 2023, closed in June.
In January 2025, Adams announced the closure of a dozen additional shelters, including another contentious site in Clinton Hill that had drawn protests from neighborhood residents. The closures came as the number of asylum seekers in the city’s care declined for 27 consecutive weeks and reached its lowest level in 18 months, as 6sqft previously reported.
As of December, an Adams administration spokesperson said the city was operating just three emergency shelters outside the traditional shelter system managed by the DHS.
Mamdani also signed a separate executive order directing the Department of Corrections and the Law Department to develop a compliance plan within 45 days to meet the Board of Corrections’ minimum standards.
The mayor further instructed the Law Department to work with the federal monitor and all parties involved in Nunez v. City of New York, a major class-action lawsuit filed in 2012 by incarcerated individuals alleging systemic and unconstitutional use of force by the city’s Department of Correction, according to the Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse.
The parties must develop a plan to implement the City Council’s Local Law 42, which prohibits prolonged solitary confinement in city jails and limits isolation to a maximum of four hours, according to a letter sent to the DOC by Council Member Jennifer Gutiérrez.
“I was elected because of my values, and my promise to always be honest with New Yorkers — and now is a moment for blunt truths,” Mamdani said. “The previous Administration’s refusal to meet their legal obligations on Rikers has left us with troubling conditions that will take time to resolve.”
RELATED:
