The City of New York has seen an influx of migrants and is exploring the option of temporarily housing them on cruise ships to address the issue of overcrowded shelters.
‘We are not going to leave any stone unturned,’ New York Mayor, Eric Adams, was reported as saying by the New York Times. The city said that more than 11 000 people, mostly Venezuelans, have arrived from the border since May, with New York’s shelters seeing a 22% occupancy spike.
Shelters in the Big Apple have increased by 10 000 people in four months, growing by nearly 2 000 in just the past week. A woman committed suicide in a shelter on 18 September, and the City decided to offer mental health services to migrants.
Adams met with Norwegian Cruise Line’s chief executive on 12 June to discuss the possibility. The City also dabbled with the idea of using cruise ships to house migrants back in 2002: ‘If you think about a cruise ship, it’s exactly what you need,’ New Yorks’s then mayor, Michael R Bloomberg, said at the time. ‘Rooms with bathrooms that are safe, that we can afford, in a neighbourhood, we can use.’
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