The Big Apple’s migrant crisis sparked an “unprecedented” increase in the number of people
living in taxpayer-funded homeless shelters, according to a City Hall report released Tuesday.
The daily average shelter population surged 20.8% — to 54,838 — during the first four months of fiscal 2023, which began July 1, the
Preliminary Mayor’s Management Report for February said.
That’s up from an average of 45,381 during the same time in fiscal 2022, with the report saying the spike was “driven by an unprecedented increase in entrants, primarily related to the influx of asylum seekers from the southern United States border.”
The increase — which followed two successive years of declines — was even greater when combined with the final months of fiscal 2022 when the
flood of migrants to the city began.
Those figures showed that the number of families with children who entered the shelter system spiked 41.8% while the number of single adults more than doubled, by 104.7%, according to the report.
“This rapid increase in entries resulted in growth of 26.9% in the families with children census and of 9.5% the single adult census, despite increases in exits to permanent housing over that same period,” the report said.