It’s Going to Be a Long Winter at New York City's Floyd Bennett Field for Migrants

Residents of the 2,000-bed shelter, which opened in November to house migrant families after the Adams administration said hotels and shelter space had hit capacity, were bracing for more long nights. The complex, four massive tents divided into private pods where families sleep on cots, is heated and fortified with ballasts that can reportedly withstand winds of nearly 70 miles an hour. But the dormitories don’t have restrooms, and so the 1,720 people currently living there are still exposed to the elements every time they need to shower or use the bathroom in portable toilets stationed nearby. After Monday’s storm, temperatures dipped below freezing.

These conditions, along with the remote location, were among the top concerns from advocates in the lead-up to the opening of the facility. The city says the complex didn’t flood on Monday (though residents have said water got into the tents), but it is located on a floodplain. And without easy access to transportation, people are left to make long treks to school, jobs, and anything else they might need. “The tents are not safe for children in any weather, and families should never have been placed at this site,” said Joshua Goldfein, a staff attorney at the Legal Aid Society, which has been a critic of the tents since they were first announced. “As the temperatures drop, the situation will become much worse.” The facility isn’t built for “anything beyond basic survival,” he added.

Which is more or less a point the administration agrees on as it functionally ends the right to shelter and advertises the poor conditions migrants can expect if they come to the city. “We need to counteract those forms of communications that are basically saying, ‘You come to the City of New York, you’re going to automatically have a job, you’re going to be in a five-star hotel,’” Adams said at a briefing in October.

Meanwhile, the most recent estimates say ~10% of apartments in Manhattan are vacant (archive link), and that’s not even taking into account the vast amount of housing intentionally kept off the market (archive link).

The Adams administration is deliberately inflicting suffering on migrants, including families and children, and it will be on them if and when these inhabitable conditions get someone injured or killed.