The announcement follows months of complaints by immigrants and asylum seekers about missing mail in city shelters, complicating their immigration cases and other efforts to establish their lives here, as City Limits was the first to report in July.
Adi Talwar
Volunteers sorting mail at Afrikana, a community center in East Harlem, which has been providing an address for migrants to receive mail after witnessing issues in the shelter system.
Mayor Eric Adams announced changes this week in the city’s response to the arrival of migrants, including the launch of a centralized mail center for those residing in, and exiting, the shelter system.
The announcement follows months of complaints by immigrants and asylum seekers about missing mail in city shelters, complicating their immigration cases and other efforts to establish their lives here, as City Limits was the first to report in July. The problem was exacerbated by the city’s shelter time limits for migrants, which requires those impacted to reapply for a new shelter bed every 30 or 60 days.
The planned mail center will “further ensure that migrants have access to critical legal information—like updates on their asylum, temporary protected status (TPS), or work authorization applications—as well as other correspondence, regardless of their location in the city, including if they leave the system,” reads the city’s announcement.
However, neither the mayor’ nor other officials from city agencies provided specific details about the operation of the mail center, including its expected location.
During a joint hearing of the City Council’s committees on General Welfare and Immigration on Tuesday, Molly Schaeffer, director of the Office of Asylum-Seeker Operations, said the mail center would open in the coming weeks but did not provide details about its hours, whether people would have to show identification or sign in to collect their mail, or how many people it will serve.
Schaeffer said the administration is making sure each shelter holds onto important mail. “It’ll be a place where people can come pick up their mail and leave, and we’ll be able to have the functionality to call people who have left their mail for a long time,” she said.
When City Limits previously investigated the issue, a City Hall spokesperson said the administration has a centralized database that indicates whether migrants have mail to pick up at one of its shelters, and alerts them if they have outstanding mail after being transferred to another site, but did not elaborate on how the process works. A spokesman also said that migrants’ mail, including magazines and spam, was never discarded or destroyed.
However, during Tuesday’s hearing, advocates continued to describe the difficulties of receiving mail and important documents at city shelters.
“How does staff know what mail is important or not, how are they making that decision?” Alexa Avilés, chair of the Council’s Committee on Immigration, asked administration officials. “Is staff disposing of any mail at all?”
“Not at this time,” Schaeffer said. “One of the things is, when we have the centralized mail room, we will be having a retention policy.” She noted that a retention policy is necessary; about 74 percent of migrants who’ve entered the system within the last two years have since left shelters.
“One of the key things that we changed earlier this year,” Schaeffer acknowledged, “was making sure that each shelter held on to any important federal mail.”
Nearly 15% of migrant students have left the school system
City officials report that more migrants have been leaving shelters while fewer are arriving to the city in recent months, with 57,400—of the more than 223,000 new arrivals since April 2022—currently in the system, and the overall city shelter population dropping for 19 straight weeks.
| Site | Fiscal Year 2024 | Fiscal Year 2025 | |
| 30-day notices issued to single adult migrants | Non-DHS sites | 15,750 | 6,015 |
| DHS sites | 1,513 | 1,056 | |
| 60-day notices issued to young adults (18-22 years old) | Non-DHS sites | 2,348 | 944 |
| 60-day notices issued to families with children | Non-DHS sites | 17,117 | 6,295 |
Families with children living in Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Centers (HERRCs) have been subject to 60-day notices since the start of this year, while some families under the Hotel Vouchering Program are limited to 28-day stays in hotels.
While families with children can re-apply for shelter once their 60-day stints expire, council members noted that the number of students in shelters has doubled in recent years, and the constant movement of families has an impact on children’s education, and on the school system.
Schaeffer said that the majority, or 73 percent of migrant children in shelter-restricted households, have remained in the same school; that includes 41.9 percent who remained in the same school and shelter, and 31 percent who remained in the same school but moved to another shelter.
Nearly 15 percent—14.8 percent—of migrant students have exited the public school system. City officials added that 7 percent of students moved shelter locations and transferred schools, while 4.5 percent transferred schools but not shelter.
“Can you keep those students in the same school?” City Councilmember Gale Brewer asked during Tuesday’s hearing. “Nothing matters more than to be in the same school. Nothing.”
Dr. Ted Long, senior vice president at New York City Health + Hospitals, said more immigrant families with children are exiting the HERRC system altogether. “Through all the case management that we’re doing each week, now, 42 percent more families of children are taking the next step forward and leaving our shelter system than a year ago.”
Adi Talwar
Elizabeth Leon with her two children, ages 12 and 9, on their way to reapply for a shelter bed in January 2024, after their first shelter stint expired.
On Monday, the mayor announced new measures to ease the reapplication process for families with children in kindergarten through sixth grade, who will now be able to stay in the same shelter they were assigned after receiving a second 60-day notice.
During the hearing, Schaeffer said the measure would save the city thousands of dollars in transportation costs, but did not provide specifics when asked for estimates on how much the city is expected to save through the change.
According to reports from the Mayor’s Office to the City Council obtained by City Limits, between July 23 and Sept. 25, the Office of Pupil Transportation received more than double the number of requests for bus transportation from students staying at a HERRC site compared to last school year: jumping from 171 to 358 requests between April 24 and June 27.
In August, reports broke that families in Department of Homeless Services’ (DHS) shelters, where the largest number of migrant families are housed, would begin receiving 60-day notices (the policy had previously only applied to families with kids in shelters run by other city agencies, like H+H and the Office of Emergency Management).
But “DHS has not started giving notices in their system at this time,” DHS Chief of Operations Iris Rodriguez said during the hearing.
When asked, a DHS spokesman said the department does not plan to roll out the 60-day notices this year, but did not provide additional details on when the change will be implemented.
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