New York City universities and colleges should open up their student dorms and apartments to asylum seekers this summer, two of the state’s congressional representatives said Monday as the city continues to struggle to find room for the tens of thousands of migrants who’ve arrived since last year.
In a letter to the heads of CUNY, SUNY, NYU and a coalition of local independent institutions, Democratic New York Reps. Dan Goldman and Jamaal Bowman said the educational systems should have plenty of “available space on your campuses that may be suitable to provide shelter for new arrivals” during the summer break.
“During the summer, many of your institutions have empty dorm rooms, student apartments, and other potentially appropriate places for shelter that can serve as much-needed temporary housing for migrants,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by the Daily News. “We also ask for your help as we work with local leaders to provide food assistance and other necessities as well as pro bono legal assistance to migrant families arriving in New York.”
Bowman and Goldman urged the university bosses to conduct audits of their properties to identify spaces that could be turned into migrant housing and report results back to them.
According to an aide in Goldman’s office, SUNY, CUNY and NYU should alone have room to house thousands of migrants during the summer months, when most students vacate their dorms and apartments. The National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, the coalition also addressed by the letter, counts Columbia University, Barnard College and Fordham University among its New York City member schools.
Reps for the three university systems and the association did not immediately return requests for comment.
The request from the congressional members comes as Mayor Adams’ administration is scrambling to find housing for migrants.
According to the latest data shared by Adams’ office, more than 41,000 migrants, most of them from Latin America, are residing in city shelters and emergency hotels, pushing the systems to capacity.
That has prompted the administration to take drastic steps to find more housing, including sending migrants to live in hotels upstate and briefly activating a controversial plan earlier this month to house some in public school gyms. The administration is also considering putting migrants in a shuttered jail on Rikers Island, as first reported by The News.
A spokesman for Adams did not immediately return requests for comment on the request from the congressional members.
However, the mayor has in recent weeks lamented what he sees as an unwillingness by fellow New York City elected officials to do more to help his administration tackle the migrant crisis.
“The No. 1 question I’m asking everyone now: ‘Did you go to Washington to get us more money? What have you done for the migrants and where would you like for me to house them?’” Adams said at a press conference last week.
