NEW YORK – As New York’s immigration crisis escalates with no end in sight, according to the latest city data, there are thousands more children in New York’s homeless shelters than just a few months ago.
According to the Department of Homeless Services daily report, there were 58,152 people – single adults, adult families, and families with children – in the New York City reception system.
That’s 25% higher than the reception system’s average daily census in June, a difference of over 11,000 people. It is also 29% higher than the daily census over this period a year ago.
But among that number stand out the youngest in need. There are nearly 4,000 more children in the system now than the average three months ago and nearly 5,000 more children than the average this time last year.
The causes are complicated: increased evictions following the COVID pandemic, a slow economic recovery, lack of sufficient legal remedies for many, but in recent weeks the problem has been aggravated by the migration crisis. More than 13,000 migrants have arrived in the city in recent months, the mayor said last week, many of them on buses sent by the state of Texas.
UNDER: Children in New York City homeless shelters, average daily census
Those children are housed in the city’s school system and officials are now opening humanitarian response centers to cope with the influx. And even the total numbers are certainly not abnormal historically: the average number of children in the care system daily exceeded 20,000 every month at least from 2015 to 2019.
But the sudden tension on the system is still manifesting itself. On multiple occasions since the end of July, the city has violated its legal mandates to quickly host people, and as reported last week by our sister station NBC 4 New York, they are now waging brawls in shelters among the same homeless population in the country. city. recently arrived immigrants.
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