NYC considers turning public parks into tent cities to house illegal immigrants

Mayor Eric Adams' administration had previously constructed tent-like shelters for newcomers, however under the new plan, private tents would be handed out to newcomers.

According to the Wall Street Journal, sources with knowledge of City Hall's inner workings revealed that Adams and his top advisers discussed the possibility of campsites springing up in parks and other public spaces across all five boroughs.

When asked by the outlet about the prospect of tents filling up green spaces, City Hall spokesman Fabien Levy did not comment directly on that plan, only stating that Adams and his team were actively trying to deal with the crisis and that no options were off the table.

Earlier this week, the mayor stressed yet again just how dire the situation in the Big Apple truly is, reiterating that the city was running out of resources and at a breaking point.

"It's not 'if' people will be sleeping on the streets, it's when," he said. "We are at full capacity. We have to sort of localize it as much as possible. We have to make sure that people have some type of restroom facilities, some type of shower network."

Adams recently announced that the city anticipated it will have paid over $12 billion to deal with an estimated 100,000 illegal immigrants by 2025, with the bulk of that money going towards housing. For now, most are being sheltered in hotels thanks to an agreement between the Hotel Association of New York and the city.

The city spent $1.4 billion dealing with the problem in Fiscal Year 2022, and a staggering $5 billion in FY2023. To put that number in perspective, it is higher than the budgets of the Sanitation Department, Parks Department, and Fire Department combined.

Adams has repeatedly warned that the city is "running out of money, appropriate space, and personnel to care for [migrant] families," and has pleaded to the state and federal governments for assistance.

More than 10,000 illegal immigrants flood into the city each month, as part of the Biden administration's failed border policies that have admitted some 7 million illegal border crossers since he took office in 2021. Under Trump's final year in office in 2020, less than 500,000 illegal border crossers were admitted.