Accounting for Asylum Seeker Services

As of September 28, 2025, approximately 33,300 people seeking asylum were residing in City-funded shelters, a significant decline of 51 percent from the peak of nearly 70,000 individuals in January 2024. Since the spring of 2022, more than 239,200 asylum seekers have entered the City’s shelter system.

To accommodate the initial need to shelter thousands of asylum seekers, the City of New York opened emergency shelters, Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Centers (HERRCs), and respite centers to provide shelter for people seeking asylum under the right-to-shelter obligation, found in the State Constitution. The City also opened over 150 sites operated by the Department of Homeless Services (DHS), which now shelters the majority of this population. In response to the rising census, the City began imposing time limits on shelter stays in 2023 — first only for single adults, then expanding to families in non-DHS facilities, and finally implementing restrictions on all groups.[1] [2] These policies led to an initial increase in shelter exits, and the decline in the overall census beginning in January 2024.

Since then, federal policy changes have had a more significant impact on these trends. In June 2024, The Biden Administration issued a Presidential proclamation that restricted the ability for noncitizens to enter the United States through the southern border. The Trump Administration, beginning in late January 2025, has issued additional measures, including new limits for Temporary Protective Status (TPS), increased Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrest quotas, the reinstatement of the Remain in Mexico policy, and the implementation of self-deportation stipends. ^[3]   These policies led to a steep decrease in border crossings; the February 2025 through August 2025 average of 10,580 individuals represents a 93 percent decrease from the same period in 2024.[4] Consequently, the number of migrants entering New York City shelter has also decreased significantly since President Trump took office, from nearly 1,970 in January 2025 to approximately 360 in June 2025.[5]

Shelter sites differ by population type, serving families with children, adult families, and single adults. Initially, the Administration prioritized placing families with children in emergency hotel shelters operated by DHS, while single adults were moved to the larger congregate shelters, often run as HERRCs by NYC Health + Hospitals (H+H) or the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD). Families with children made up the largest share of the population in FY 2024 (77%), a trend that continued through FY 2025 (79%). In FY 2026, while the overall population has declined significantly, the share that are families with children has grown to 84% of the population.

As single adults and adult families declined as a share of the in-shelter asylum seeker population, the City has closed most of its H+H and HPD-run sites. As of September 28, only one H+H site and two HPD sites remain in operation. The City announced in August 2025 the closure of The Row, the last H+H site and last non-DHS site dedicated to families with children; it had capacity to shelter more than 3,000 individuals.[6] The Administration closed other large sites for this population earlier in 2025, including the Roosevelt Hotel and Randall’s Island facilities.  Currently, only three HERRCs remain open, down from a peak of 18.