NYC, federal government agree to use Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn to house migrants

The Biden administration and New York City have reached a deal to shelter homeless foreign migrants  at Brooklyn’s Floyd Bennett Field, Mayor Eric Adams’ office announced Friday afternoon.

The site, which is owned by the federal government, is expected to house more than 2,000 migrants. It will be yet another of the over 200 locations the city has opened since April 2022 to shelter the influx, which as of this week tops 113,000. About half are living in city-funded shelters, hotels or other accommodations.

The annual rent at Floyd Bennett Field is $21 million due to the National Park Service, which owns the site, plus millions of dollars in required capital improvements, according to a copy of the contract posted to the agency’s website. Adams’ announcement says the state would fully reimburse the city for the cost.

The announcement, earlier in the summer, that the site, a former airfield and now a recreation area, was being considered drew hundreds of protesters, including some Brooklyn and Rockaway residents. At one, protesters called, "No Tents, No Migrants" — a reference to the sleeping and dining tents the city is pitching to shelter migrants.

Thousands of migrants, primarily from Latin America, continue to arrive weekly to the city, which is under a decades-old and unique-in-the-nation mandate to provide shelter to anyone in need. That obligation, coupled with New York’s status as a “sanctuary city” that doesn’t cooperate with immigration enforcers, has made the city a prime destination for migrants crossing into the  United States from abroad.

In announcing the deal, Adams’ office continued to criticize the Biden administration over its handling of the crisis, saying: “We’ve been forced to unsustainably open new site after new site as asylum-seekers continue to arrive by the thousands. This is not an adequate solution or any sort of long-term plan by the federal government to this national problem.”

Adams has  estimated the cost of the crisis at $12 billion to New York City by the next fiscal year.

A call to the White House press office was disconnected before a message could be left.

Other sites the city has opened include former hotels, converted office buildings, parking lots and sports fields.

Earlier this week, Adams’ deputy overseeing the crisis, Anne Williams-Isom, said that the head count of the migrants living in New York City shelters has been relatively stable for almost a month — for the first time since the crisis began — even as thousands arrive weekly.

Williams-Isom attributes the stability of the head count to a strategy started in the summer to serve eviction notices on adult migrants after two months in city-funded accommodations — families with children are exempt — and to counselors more aggressively nudging migrants to find someplace else to live. A migrant can reapply for shelter after being evicted but must begin the bureaucratic process anew.

By Matthew Chayes

matthew.chayes@newsday.comchayesmatthew

Matthew Chayes, a Newsday reporter since 2007, covers New York City.