Times Square Office Building Is New York's Latest Migrant Shelter

Many migrants there were housed at a Midtown Manhattan hotel before calling the cruise terminal their temporary home. They will next be relocated to two office buildings, including one in Times Square that until recently housed the country’s busiest McDonald’s restaurant. The city’s $3.3 million contract with Ports America Inc. to use the cruise terminal expires April 3, records show.

Repurposing office buildings is the latest turn in New York City’s efforts to care for an estimated 54,000 migrants, some of the roughly 1 million people who were released in the U.S. after crossing the southern border illegally in 2022. Many are seeking asylum, and some rode buses to New York and other northern cities—trips sponsored by the Republican governors of Texas and Arizona.

Court decisions have established a legal right to shelter in New York City. As a result, New York City Mayor

Eric Adams

has struggled to find space for an influx of asylum seekers who began arriving in higher numbers last year.

To accommodate migrants, New York City officials set up (and took down) a tent city on Randalls Island and converted various hotels—including the world’s tallest Holiday Inn—to emergency-relief centers. The city is now in talks with houses of worship to shelter hundreds of people in sanctuaries and parish halls, according to people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Adams has said the city “pivoted and shifted” to accommodate the continued waves of newcomers. He traveled to Albany, N.Y., on Monday in part to press state lawmakers for more funding to help defray the estimated $4.2 billion cost of caring for migrants.

“This is a national issue. It should not be on the backs of New Yorkers,” the Democratic mayor said.

For migrants like Mr. Barrios, the different moves have made it more complicated to build a new life in the U.S.

“It’s been hard,” he said, recounting temporary placements at an intake center, a Bronx shelter and the Watson Hotel in Midtown Manhattan. “I’ve already had to start over twice.”

Buses carrying migrants from the cruise terminal began arriving Monday at a five-story office building in Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood. It will eventually be home to 600 men, who will sleep on cots in open floors. The remaining migrants, roughly 400 of them, will move to the Manhattan office tower by the end of this month.

Several new arrivals in interviews compared their new spot with the old. The Jefferson Building in Bushwick is closer to a subway stop and there are nearby restaurants and shops, but it comes with fewer storage lockers, the men said. They also said they believed one had to take showers according to a schedule. A city spokeswoman said showers didn’t need to be scheduled.

David Ramos,

a 36-year-old who migrated from Nicaragua, was originally housed in the Watson Hotel but was moved to the cruise terminal when the city converted that hotel into a shelter for families.

People at the cruise terminal were told in recent weeks where they would be going next—either Bushwick or the Candler Building on 42nd St., within sight of Times Square and next to Madame Tussauds wax museum. Mr. Ramos said he had hoped to be assigned to Times Square, which is closer to a job doing food delivery that he has found on the Upper East Side.

On Monday, electricians walked in and out of the Candler Building but there was no sign of new residents. The 24-story structure was built more than 100 years ago by Coca-Cola Co. magnate Asa Griggs Candler and until 2020, it contained the offices of

Live Nation Entertainment Inc.,

according to a website for building owner Epic US LLC. Its website says the building is undergoing renovation and could convert some of its upper floors to hotel rooms.

The company didn’t respond to requests for comment. A City Hall spokeswoman said the Candler Building would offer the same amenities as other city relief centers. It will open later this week, city officials said.

Mr. Adams and his aides have explored a number of ways to help accommodate migrants, including possibly renting a cruise ship, the mayor has said. The city first placed migrants in its existing network of homeless shelters, which city officials said quickly filled up.

As of Sunday, there were around 23,000 migrants in homeless shelters—roughly 32% of the total shelter population, city officials said. That led to the creation of the ad hoc relief centers in a tent city, hotels, at the cruise terminal and now in converted office buildings. There were about 9,400 migrants in the seven relief centers as of Sunday, city officials said.

There are also 4,500 rooms in roughly 60 hotels being used as emergency shelters, according to the Hotel Association of New York City, a trade group that has helped coordinate the rentals. 

City officials are now in talks with religious leaders about a city-funded program serving hundreds of people, which could be announced as soon as this week, according to one of the people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Adams said earlier this month that the city was talking with faith-based institutions to help migrants settle. A spokeswoman for the mayor declined to comment further.

The Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Brooklyn’s Bay Ridge neighborhood could take part, Pastor

Juan Carlos Ruiz

said. His congregation has distributed food to migrants and hosts legal clinics to help craft asylum claims. It also provided respite beds for several months last year, but stopped as volunteers burned out, he said.

“We are getting ready, if there is any funding available from the city, we have the facility, we have the space,” Mr. Ruiz said.

City Councilwoman

Alexa Avilés,

a Democrat who represents the neighborhood that includes the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, said it is disorienting for migrants to be shuttled between various locations.

“It is without question that this is a very difficult situation,” she said. The cruise-terminal facility was jarring to visit: Migrants slept on cots lined up inches from each other, and shower facilities were in trailers near the harbor—forcing walks in the cold, she said. “We need to find a way to create a more resilient system.”

Write to Jimmy Vielkind at jimmy.vielkind@wsj.com