New York City officials ‘have discussed distributing TENTS to migrants and creating encampments in Central Park and other outdoor spaces’ – as majority of New Yorkers say crisis will destroy the city

Officials in New York City have discussed handing tents to newly arrived migrants and housing them in encampments in parks, according to a report.

The city has already set up large tents to house asylum seekers, but this new proposal would be more like a campsite, sources told The Wall Street Journal.

The report comes after Mayor Eric Adams said yesterday that “everything is on the table” when asked whether his plans to shelter migrants would extend to Manhattan’s iconic Central Park.

Adams has said the city has run out of hotel rooms and indoor locations to house the 65,000 migrants who remain in its care after 120,000 arrived in the past 18 months.

It comes as a poll released this week found a majority of New Yorkers agreed with Adams’ own words earlier this year that the migrant crisis will “destroy the city.”

New York City’s migrant crisis is expected to cost the city $4.7 billion this year. Above is a list of some of the landmarks that have been converted into emergency shelters as officials struggle to house nearly 60,000 migrants in the city’s care

Adams issued another dire warning during a press conference on Tuesday. He said he is looking for large outdoor spaces to house migrants and that people will see “the visual signs of this crisis in our city.”

He continued: ‘It is not “if” people will sleep on the streets, but when. We are running at full capacity. We need to localize it as much as possible. We need to make sure that people have some kind of toilet facility, some kind of shower network.”

As the city prepares for winter, Adams said he’s already meeting people who are “dealing with this in other countries, about how you don’t deal with the sanitation issues that come with it.”

“I have to approach it in a way that we don’t see what’s happening in other cities, where you see tent cities popping up everywhere,” he added.

While the mayor made no mention of tent distribution on Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reports that Adams and his team considered the option over the summer.

The mayor’s office told CBS News that encampments in Central Park, Prospect Park and Floyd Bennett Field are “on the table.”

Between hotels and other locations, the city has opened at least 250 emergency shelters for migrants. In March there were only 103, showing how the crisis continues to worsen.

While the embattled mayor, who is up for re-election in 2025, continues to deal with the crisis, the new poll from the Siena College Research Institute shows that half of New York voters now disapprove of him.

Officials have turned to tent facilities, dormitories, gyms and parks to comply with a state law requiring housing for the homeless.

Last week, an emergency migrant shelter on Staten Island was evacuated after firefighters deemed it unsafe and former officials warned it could become a death trap.

Like migrant adults, migrant families who are unable to find housing on their own will be able to return to the arrival center at The Roosevelt Hotel and reapply for housing.

A judge had ordered Adams in September to remove the migrants from the former Catholic St. John Villa Academy, ruling that the Right to Shelter law did not apply to migrants, but the Democrat appealed the decision.

While he initially said he was proud to come from a Right to Shelter city, Adams is trying to suspend the measure, forcing the city to provide shelter to anyone who requests it.

Adams has also limited the stay of migrant families with children to 60 days and for single migrants to 30 days.

Like migrant adults, migrant families who cannot find housing on their own will be able to return to The Roosevelt Hotel’s arrival center and reapply for shelter, a source told the Daily News.

The historic Manhattan hotel – dubbed “the new Ellis Island” by one city official – has become the migrant registration point and currently houses 3,000 asylum seekers.

Many of the migrants have arrived without housing or work, forcing the city to build emergency shelters and provide various government services, at an estimated cost of $12 billion over the next few years.

Governor Kathy Hochul, who also welcomed asylum seekers for the first time last year, supports the city’s efforts to suspend a unique legal agreement that requires homeless people to be given emergency housing.

The need for shelter has existed in New York City for more than forty years, following a legal agreement that required the city to provide temporary housing to every homeless person. No other major city in America has such a requirement.

Hochul endorsed New York City’s challenge to the requirement in a lawsuit this week, telling reporters Thursday that the mandate was never intended to apply to an international humanitarian crisis.