There are now more illegal immigrants than homeless people housed in New York City’s shelters

 The illegal immigrants New York City is housing in homeless shelters have now outnumbered the homeless New Yorkers.

The tipping point – when the illegals or "asylum seekers" outnumbered the city's homeless – came on Sunday, June 25, when the illegal immigrants logged under the city's care reached 50,000. Meanwhile, there are approximately 49,700 homeless New Yorkers at local shelters.  

Reports note that New York City's expansive homeless shelter system has essentially doubled in occupancy due to the recent influx of illegal immigrants, mostly from Latin American nations like Venezuela, Ecuador and Colombiga.

Keeping the 50,000 illegals in shelters makes things more expensive, especially for the city's taxpayers. Without work permits, many so-called "asylum seekers" are unable to work to pay for basic necessities. These illegals are also not entitled to the same public assistance benefits as citizens. And for migrants, the city is not collecting its usual share of shelter subsidies from the state and federal governments.

The city under Democratic Mayor Eric Adams has already spent over a billion dollars in taxpayer funds to house the illegals since they started arriving in large numbers beginning in the spring of 2022. By the spring of 2024, the city expects the bill to surge to anywhere between $4 billion to $4.5 billion.

The illegal immigrants are being housed at over 150 sites, including hotels, regular homeless shelters, massive "emergency relief centers" and "respite centers."

New York City unlikely to receive state or federal aid to deal with illegals

"You see from today's numbers that we have reached a tipping point," said Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services Anne Williams-Isom. "We now have more asylum seekers in our care than longtime New Yorkers. We all are facing a humanitarian crisis here in the five boroughs."

While Williams-Isom believes it is important for the city to welcome the surge of illegal immigrants with dignity, she admitted that the numbers are "unsustainable" due to limited resources.

"My heart breaks a little bit, and I have these conflicting feelings," said Williams-Isom while touring a new arrival center at the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown Manhattan. "[The staff] are working 12-hour shifts. We thought that we would see some relief. But there is no relief coming. There is no cavalry coming."

Since spring 2022, more than 81,200 so-called "asylum seekers" have poured into New York City's intake system, according to Williams-Isom, and thousands more continue to pour in every week.

"We are still in the middle of this [migration] wave," said Williams-Isom. "And so, is it going to get more, is it going to get less? I have no idea because we are just dealing with it in terms of what comes to the front door and doing the best that we can as people come to the front door."

"I know we're at a breaking point," she added. "And my heart breaks when I see children coming into our arrival center and sitting there and being exhausted and wondering and hoping that we have enough space for them."

Mayor might ask residents to shelter migrants in their homes

As New York City officials continue to struggle to house the nearly 100,000 illegal immigrants in the city, Adams suggested the possibility of housing migrants in private homes.

"It is my vision to take the next step to this, to go to the faith-based locales and the move to private residents, there are residents who are suffering right now because of economic challenges," said Adams. "They have spare rooms, they have locales and if we can find a way to get over the 30-day rule and other rules that government has in its place, we can take that $4.2 billion, $4.3 billion maybe now, that we potentially will have to spend and we can put it back in the pockets of everyday New Yorkers, everyday houses of worship, instead of putting it in the pockets of corporations."

This comes after Adams similarly received backlash for busing some arriving illegals to New York City's suburbs, and then suing over 30 New York counties over local orders intended to prevent the city from housing migrants in their towns.