The expected opening of a 2,200-bed shelter for migrants in Port Morris next month is drawing heat from South Bronx residents who say yet another shelter is the last thing the neighborhood needs.
At a public forum organized by Community Board 1 at Lincoln Hospital on Jan. 27, Bronxites blasted representatives from city agencies who came to present details of the project.
The shelter will be located in a seven-floor warehouse building at 322 Bruckner Boulevard at the corner of E. 141st Street, and will have 24/7 security, according to city officials. The City says there will be a 30-day stay limit for single men, and 60 days for families, and that the shelter will close as soon as its mandate has been met.
Members of Community Board 1 and elected officials say they were blindsided. Danny Barber, who chairs Board 1’s Supportive and Public Housing committee, criticized the city officials for moving ahead with a plan that “wasn’t properly presented to the community.” The South Bronx, he said, is saturated with shelters “while others have nothing. Yes, we are frustrated,” that the administration is “making deals for our community without our input.”
Barber, a lifelong tenant of public housing who serves as president of NYCHA’s Citywide Council of Presidents, said he will organize tenants to protest the new shelter. He named the half-dozen public housing complexes located within a few blocks of the shelter site, whose residents he said he will rally.
Nearly an hour into the meeting an audience member in Lincoln’s packed auditorium asked the presenters if the shelter was a “done deal.” A collective groan went up when Camille Joseph Varlack, deputy mayor and chief of staff for Mayor Eric Adams, answered “Yes.”
Board 1 member Dalourny Nemorin, who works as a public defender, called the presenters’ data misleading when they showed a pie chart indicating that just 6 percent of the city’s migrants are being sheltered in the Bronx, while the remaining 94 percent are scattered across the other four boroughs. The South Bronx is inundated with shelters for the homeless, not just migrants, said Nemorin, adding “shelters are being dumped; transitional housing is being dumped; supportive housing are being dumped,” on the neighborhood.
“Things are extremely bad right now,” she said. “Homelessness, drug addiction, mental health. We have repeatedly asked for resources for this because it requires more than the police and we continue to be ignored.”
Nemorin questioned the need for 2,200 new beds when the city has said it is closing 20 migrant shelters citywide.
Molly Schaeffer, executive director for the city’s Office of Asylum Seeker Operations, said more than 230,700 asylum seekers have come to New York City since the spring of 2022, and that of 106,000 people currently in shelters, 47,600 are migrants. Despite the closings, the need for shelters is so constant, she said, that the city sometimes has to open a shelter without warning, in an evening.
“No one community has been spared from this all-city response,” said Schaeffer, who later added that the city is “asking for help from our federal and state partners because the city has spent an exorbitant amount of money to take care of this issue.”
City Councilwoman Diana Ayala fended off broadsides to her legacy representing the neighborhood, telling the audience she had no hand in bringing in the new shelter, and defending her decision to vouch for the borough-based jail, which is slated to be built over the next decade around the corner from the shelter site.
“The mayor doesn’t need our permission to put a shelter anywhere,” said Ayala.
Ayala chairs the council’s General Welfare Committee, which is responsible for the oversight of shelters. Although she floated some potential shelter sites to the administration two years ago, including 223 Bruckner, she said, no one from the mayor’s office told her they were going to open one here.
She first noticed something was awry while heading that committee in 2022, when Texas and Florida began busing migrants to New York. And with apartment vacancies at a paltry one percent citywide, Ayala added, the city’s severe housing shortage compounds the need for shelter space.
She deflected concerns the shelter would become permanent as “absolutely not true. As long as they no longer need it, this building will shut down.”
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Board 1 Chair Clarisa Alayeto countered that “the fact that the city is here saying this is gonna happen is disrespectful to the community. We’re here because the community board brought the community together. No elected official, nobody from the city’s office” took the “opportunity before the shelter was identified to have this conversation.”
“This is not about us being anti-migrant, this is about the over saturation” of shelters in Mott Haven, said Alayeto.
Borough President Vanessa Gibson said she is urging the city not to convert the warehouse into a shelter, but instead “to repurpose that site for 2,200 manufacturing jobs.”
Councilman Rafael Salamanca Jr. said a shelter in the Hunts Point part of his district called The Living Room should serve as a warning against opening new shelters because of the resources it sucks out. Incidents at The Living Room, he said, led to nearly 3,000 9-1-1 calls in 2024 and 161 3-1-1 calls, drawing overstretched police resources from Longwood Avenue’s 41st Precinct.
Like Ayala, Salamanca said no one in the administration alerted him to the proposed Bruckner Boulevard shelter even though it sits on the edge of his district.
Members of the audience were livid with the presenters, causing Board 1 members to repeatedly ask for calm. About a dozen community members took the mic to pummel the presenters with criticisms.
Mike Young, director of Padre Plaza Community Garden on St. Ann’s Avenue, asked if “any of these immigrants have been properly screened? Do we know who the rapists are? Do we know who the people with the violent crimes are? We see a lot of people that’s burned out in the Bronx right here. But you got time to bring immigrants over here? 2,200 of them? What is the actual plan? Do you have jobs for them?”
Judy Kudlow, who said she has run an art school for women for nine years across from the shelter site, said she had never feared the streets of Port Morris before, but that’s changed now.
“I am now terrified for me and my students,” she said. “I will have to move. Give me the exact date when they will be moving in. You have made a terrible mistake. You invited these people.”
Gabe De Jesus, longtime president of the 40th Precinct Community Council, said in a written statement that his group will “call for a detailed public safety plan, increased police presence, and strict shelter rules to mitigate potential risks,” and added the city “must engage with local residents, businesses and organizations to ensure their concerns are heard and addressed.” The precinct council’s next meeting will take place next Wednesday, Feb. 5, at 6:30 p.m. at the new precinct station house at 567 E. 149th Street.
One audience member who said she herself was formerly undocumented, accused the presenters of mischaracterizing themselves as “experts” in taking care of asylum seekers.
“You have no partnerships with real (community based organizations) to then service these folks that you’re bringing in,” said Ana Mendieta. “It’s not okay for you to take our tax money and call yourselves experts.”
Pedro Suarez, executive director of the Third Avenue Business Improvement District, echoed statements he made at a press conference by Rep. Ritchie Torres earlier in January, saying the South Bronx is on a “precipice” already, with no control over open drug use around The Hub and other public spaces.
Michigan-based Garner Property Management will manage the shelter, which city records show is owned by MTS Realty Corp. Melrose community activist Marty Rogers asked how much the city is paying the management company under the terms of the contract, but Alrack responded that she didn’t know.
Arlack said Mayor Adams attempted to address the affordable housing shortage with his City of Yes initiative. Community Board 1 was the only one of the borough’s 12 boards to reject that initiative last year, saying it was forced on them without allowing enough time to evaluate the plan’s complex details.
Arlack said community organizations will be located in the shelter to help the migrants, some of whom are eligible to work. She repeatedly deflected criticism of the quality of many of those who will be staying there.
“Many of them are professionals who come here in search of the American dream,” she said.
This is really messed up !! This is because of Eric Adam’s, because he feels people should be free !! Such a lousy Mayor to allow Migrants into our country and you don’t know anything about them. Now we have to worry about all the no good trash coming in, thanks to this dam Mayor !! These migrants should be sent back, not dumped here in the Bronx, NYC, and Queens. We now have to really worry for our safety. Trump better build that wall and get rid of them !!
Queens County has far more land area space than does The Bronx a much smaller borough AND the most impoverished, My opinionated reason for these people, wanting to place migrants, mostly male in an unused warehouse. Women and girls have a right to believe they’re being placed in perilously dangerous situations.