Some of the Big Apple’s poorest zip codes are being forced to bear the greatest brunt of the city’s migrant crisis — including a Queens neighborhood saddled with more shelters than any other part of the five boroughs, internal data kept from the public but obtained by The Post reveal.
Long Island City is home to a staggering 23 government-run migrant shelters — 12% of the 193 operating in New York City, according to data tallied off a confidential list of shelter sites used by city agencies.
“The city dropped a bomb on us,” said Queensbridge Houses resident Danny Beauford, whose 11101 zip code includes a 24th shelter in neighboring Astoria. “The [migrants] are taking over. They’re taking over all the parking with their 8,000 scooters. They’re disrespectful — peeing in front of everybody. We do that one time, and we’re going to jail for a long time.”
Three of the top five most shelter-saturated zip codes — which cover parts of the Jamaica, Queens and East New York, Brooklyn— are among the poorest areas in New York City, with median incomes below $37,300, according to Data Commons.
A Post analysis of an internal list of active shelters used by city agencies as of June 25 also found:
- Queens is home to 70 – or 36% – of the 193 shelters that currently host 65,300 migrants under city care. Another 49 shelters are in Manhattan, 44 in Brooklyn, 25 in The Bronx and five are on Staten Island.
- Jamaica is not too far behind LIC. There’s 13 shelters in the 11435 zip code that includes Jamaica and neighboring Briarwood; and another seven in the 11434 section of Jamaica.
- Manhattan’s 10036 zip code, which covers Midtown West, is home to eight shelters.
- 11207 in East New York has six.
- The 10467 (Williamsbridge, Bronx), 12206 (parts of Bushwick and Williamsburg, Brooklyn) and 11212 (Brownsville, Brooklyn) each have five.
Mayor Eric Adams’ office on Saturday told The Post the number of city shelters is now up to 217, but declined to reveal the additional locations.
None of the city’s 193 migrant shelters reviewed by The Post are located in the top five zips by median income in New York City, which covers Tribeca, Battery Park City, the Financial District and other parts of Lower Manhattan, as well as Lincoln Square, records show.
In LIC, the divide is especially stark, where the nearly two dozen shelters are clustered around two public housing projects.
Yet the adjacent 11109 zip code in LIC – a skyscraper-filled community that offers spectacular waterfront views of Manhattan’s skyline and has among the NYC’s priciest real estate – doesn’t have a single shelter.
“Why are y’all sending them here?” wondered Shawarn Shields, one of 7,000 residents at Queensbridge, North America’s largest housing project. “Send them to Fifth Avenue! Send them to Park Avenue, but they won’t do that.
“Why are you sending where everyone is already living check to check?” said Shields, 56. “They ain’t living check to check in Manhattan.”
Besides Queensbridge, this part of LIC is home to another 4,000 public-housing tenants at the nearby Ravenswood Houses.
Residents at both New York City Housing Authority developments say they’re located so close to LIC’s mega-cluster of shelters that low-income NYCHA tenants typically find themselves competing with migrants for crucial services provided by the city and nonprofits.
Beauford, 36, of Queensbridge, said lines at local food pantries to pick up healthy meals are now “longer” than historically long lines to collect welfare checks.
“People from the projects don’t even get food,” he said. “[The migrants] come early and tie their little carts up to a gate to hold their spot; then people from the projects show up and are like ‘whose carts are these?’”
Councilwoman Julie Won (D-Queens), who represents the neighborhood, attributed the long lines at the pantries to contracted city vendors supplying “rotten” and “inedible” food at some shelters.
Local public schools are also exhausting resources trying to educate young migrants, who are far behind in their studies compared to other students of similar ages, and requests by Won’s office for more “resources” from City Hall to help handle the new arrivals are routinely ignored, the councilwoman added.
“These shelters are being placed in the poorest part of communities,” she said. “[The Adams administration] needs to spread them out, so you’re not hurting communities – especially low-income communities.”
Nearly 80%, or 153, of the shelters documented in the confidential list are former hotels and other lodging establishments like The Roosevelt in Midtown that are being subsidized by taxpayer dollars.
The others include houses of worship, recreation centers – as well as controversial pop-up “tent city” complexes erected to house 3,000 migrants on Randall’s Island; nearly 2,000 at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn; and another 1,000 outside Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens.
The city had at least another 84 sites throughout the five boroughs operating as migrant shelters over the past two years that were closed as of two weeks ago, records show. At least three others, including the NYPD’s former police academy building in Manhattan, serve as “overflow sites” to house migrants only when needed.
Last year, Mayor Eric Adams attempted to curb the ballooning taxpayer costs to house migrants — now roughly $2 billion of the nearly $5 billion total — by capping how long newcomers could stay in public shelters. Migrant families now have 60 days to find permanent housing and single adults 30 days, but all can reapply to remain in shelters if unsuccessful.
The Adams administration has routinely denied media requests for the locations of its migrant shelters, citing privacy concerns — instead only revealing addresses for 15 designated as “Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Centers” that provide asylum seekers various social services, and leaving the public to figure out the rest on their own.
Locations are prioritized based on how quickly they can be readied to house migrants, City Hall spokesperson Liz Garcia said, adding the city closed some shelters after contracts with providers expired and continues to open new locations as needed.
“As we continue to try to find safe, viable sites across all five boroughs, we are grateful for every community that has stepped up and welcomed temporary emergency sites,” she said.
“And it is clear that our efforts are working, as we have already helped more than 65 percent of asylum seekers who have come into our care take the next steps in their journeys and move out of our shelter system as they seek to be self-sufficient.”
Councilwoman Joann Ariola, a Republican whose district in southern Queens is a hotspot for migrant moms who illegally hawk food and roads on highways, blamed the migrant mess on the Biden administration.
“The illegal migrant crisis should have never reached this point where we are stuffing people into any space we can,” said Ariola. “This is a result of massive mismanagement at the federal level, and now working-class people in Queens and Manhattan are shouldering the burden.”
Additional reporting by Matthew Sedacca and Claire Samstag
