NYC Will Empty Floyd Bennett Field Migrant Shelter Before Trump Inauguration

The Brooklyn facility is on a list of 25 the Adams adminstration says it closed in recent weeks or plans to close before the end of March, as the number of migrants in shelters continues to decline.

by Gwynne Hogan Dec. 10, 2024, 9:37 a.m.



A group of migrants run toward a family shelter at Floyd Bennett Field as a rainstorm descended on the city, Jan. 9, 2024. Credit: Alex Krales/THE CITY

New York City will have shut down two dozen shelters in the five boroughs and beyond by the end of March, city officials announced Tuesday morning.

Those include the vast family shelter at Floyd Bennett Field on federal property in southern Brooklyn, which is expected to be moved out by Jan. 15 — five days before President-elect Trump’s inauguration. The giant tents on the site is to be dismantled in the weeks after, according to a City Hall source who was not authorized to speak to reporters.

While the city had just extended an annual lease on the property with the National Parks Service for another year in September, either party had the right to cancel it with a 90-day warning, according to the terms of the lease. City officials intended to give the required warning on Tuesday, the source said.

THE CITY reported in November that local Republicans, who opposed the shelter since before it opened last fall, pledged to push incoming president Trump to end the city’s lease on the property, while advocates rang alarm bells that residents there could prove uniquely vulnerable to Trump’s mass deportation agenda.

In recent weeks, the mutual aid volunteer group Floyd Bennett Field Neighbors, which had been providing clothing and other assistance to residents for more than a year, had begun to mount a pressure campaign on city officials and local electeds to force the city to close Floyd Bennett Field before Trump’s inauguration. In addition to concerns for residents there, they also worried the site could be repurposed as a detention center.

In a statement for the group released by the group, Ariana Hellerman, the group’s core organizer, said they welcomed the news of the shelter’s closure.

“We have been in solidarity with the residents of Floyd Bennett Field for a year, advocating for better living conditions with them,” Hellerman said. “We are thrilled to hear this news.”

In addition to the closure of Floyd Bennett Field, which had been previously announced for February, city officials laid out a list of 24 other shelters that either had closed in recent weeks or is slated to close by the end of March.

The number included 15 New York City shelters including as well as another 10 upstate hotels in Albany, Buffalo and Poughkeepsie, among other locations.

Eleven of the shelters on the list have already closed, including one in a warehouse on the JFK airport campus, one at the Essence JFK and another at the Voyage Hotel in Long Island City, while another 14 closures are planned for between now and the end of the March.

https://www.thecity.nyc/2024/12/10/f...elter-closing/