New York City will close the controversial Randall’s Island migrant camp shelter by the end of February, Mayor Eric Adams said Wednesday.
City Hall, in a press release announcing the massive tent encampments Feb. 28 closure, said that the number of migrants housed in taxpayer-funded shelters had gone down for 14 consecutive weeks, and was now at its lowest level in more than a year.
It touted the administration’s 30-and-60 day limits on stays for single adults and families, respectively, as well as reticketing — a service that helps arrange travel out of the city — and connecting migrants to services for its success in reducing the shelter population.
“We’re not out of the woods yet, but make no mistake, thanks in large part to our smart management strategies and successful advocacy, we have turned the corner on this crisis,” Adams said in a statement.
At its height, Randall’s Island had a capacity of about 3,000.
The city started to shrink it in August, moving about 800 residents out and taking down the largest tent at the shelter site, officials said.
Over the next four months, a City Hall spokesperson said it would slow the rate at which newly-arrived single adult migrants are sent to Randall’s Island and gradually relocate them to other sites across the Big Apple as capacity allows.
Once the camp is cleared, the city “will invest in restoring the remaining impacted athletic fields and parkland,” officials said. It’s unclear how long that process will take before the impacted areas can reopen to the public.
The island contains 330 acres of parkland and includes a stadium, 60 athletic fields, a tennis facility and vast green space.
The mega-shelter has become a source of contention as migrants who were kicked out after hitting the stay limit began creating their own encampments around it.
Parks Department police officers and the NYPD have repeatedly raided the area to remove makeshift dwellings and stop reported open-air drug markets.
The huge shelter, which is managed by the city Health and Hospital agency, has also seen several violent crimes since it opened in the summer of 2023.
There are about 60,600 migrants currently housed in the Big Apple’s shelter system and some 218,900 migrants have come through the intake system since spring of 2022, according to the latest city numbers.
