NYC to Include Migrants in Annual Street Homelessness Census

NEW YORK (NY Daily News/TNS) — Any migrants spotted sleeping outside will be counted as part of the city’s annual street homelessness census this month, according to Adams administration officials.

The so-called HOPE Count, which was set to be conducted Tuesday night into Wednesday morning, involves city outreach workers and volunteers fanning across the five boroughs to tally how many individuals are sleeping on the streets. The tally is reported to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and used to assess how much federal funding the city should get for operating homeless shelters.

In a Tuesday afternoon briefing, Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services Anne Williams-Isom confirmed that newly arrived migrants — dozens of whom have been spotted sleeping outside a Manhattan intake center in recent weeks amid overcrowding in local shelters — will be included in the HOPE Count. She said the city has 1,500 New Yorkers signed up to volunteer for the count, a number she called “fantastic.”

However, asked by the Daily News after the briefing if she expects a bump in federal homeless aid as a result of an increase in the HOPE Count, Williams-Isom demurred.

“I don’t think it will,” she said. “I think [the feds] use it just to kind of see the premise that is going on … It’s not automatic.”

Mayor Eric Adams has since 2022 pleaded with the federal government to provide the city with more financial aid to tackle the migrant crisis.

To date, the feds have provided less than $500 million — an amount Adams has characterized as a drop in the bucket when compared to the hundreds of millions of dollars the city says it’s spending every month on housing and providing services for migrants.

According to the latest data from Adams’ office, nearly 70,000 migrants remain housed in city shelters. The city has shelled out more than $3 billion on housing, feeding and providing them with services since the crisis started in spring 2022, Adams administration officials say.

Adult migrants have recently been spotted sleeping outside the city’s so-called “reticketing center” in the East Village, where they’re instructed to go to reapply for shelter if they still need it after being removed from their previous placements under the Adams administration’s 30-day policy.

Migrant advocates have said the policy, which limits consecutive shelter stays for migrant adults to 30 days, is inhumane and fueling street homelessness.

Some of the migrants who have slept outside the East Village site say they are doing so because they’re concerned they might otherwise lose their place in line for a new shelter bed.

But Adams said in Tuesday’s briefing that the 30-day restriction is critical to maintaining capacity in the shelter system. He also argued that any migrants who are sleeping outside are doing so by choice.

“We’re not telling anyone they have to sleep outside on the street,” he said. “People are making the decision that this is what they want to do. We are creating rooms for people to wait in.”