The Adams administration will shut down operations at New York City’s last hotel dedicated to housing homeless migrants in the coming months, the mayor’s office announced Saturday.
The Row NYC in Midtown was the first hotel complex in the city to be converted into temporary housing for migrants after the city’s shelter system became overburdened with a surge of asylum seekers in 2022. The 1,300-room hotel was not taking guests when it was converted into a migrant shelter. It was also contracted by the city to be used as a homeless shelter during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Three years ago, thousands of migrants and asylum seekers began streaming into our city every week — and the Adams administration stepped up,” Mayor Eric Adams said in a statement. “We opened hundreds of emergency migrant shelters to ensure no family slept on the street. Since then, we have successfully helped more than 200,000 migrants leave our shelter system and take the next step toward self-sufficiency.”
City officials said they did not know if the Row would convert back to a hotel or would shutter entirely. Representatives from the Row did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The closure adds to a list of 64 city-run emergency migrant sites that have closed down since last June, including the city’s tent-based facilities.
The city’s migrant intake center at the Roosevelt Hotel near Grand Central Terminal also closed down in June. That space along with the Row NYC became symbols of the growing level of migration into the city, spurred in part by Southern states sending migrants to New York on buses.
The number of asylum seekers entering the city began to wane before the 2024 presidential election. The trend has continued this year as President Donald Trump has pursued an aggressive anti-immigration agenda that’s included deploying Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officers to arrest asylum seekers who appear at federal immigration court.
Still, the mayor said the city is recovering from what was an “international humanitarian crisis.”
Because of the city’s “right to shelter” law, officials are required to provide a bed or temporary housing to anyone in need. The Adams administration sued over the law, arguing it should not apply to migrants.
During the Biden administration, Adams routinely blamed the White House for the rising number of asylum seekers in New York City. He said his indictment on federal corruption charges last year — which have since been dropped at the request of the Trump administration — was in retaliation to his criticism of Biden.