NYC’s notorious Roosevelt Hotel shelter will close next week as last migrant families relocate

The Roosevelt Hotel migrant shelter is set to close Tuesday – three years after it opened and quickly became a symbol of the city’s migrant crisis in the heart of Manhattan.

There were fewer than 10 families of asylum seekers still in the former hotel as of Thursday, as the spot spent its final days as a migrant intake center in a very visible and highly trafficked area of midtown packed with tourists and commuters, The Post has learned.

The historic hotel has been the first stop for many of more than 230,000 migrants that have come to the five boroughs since 2022. During the peak of the crisis, the shelter housed as many as 2,900 people on the taxpayers’ dime, according to officials.

Mayor Eric Adams first announced the closure of the notorious shelter back in February, when he stopped just short of proclaiming that the migrant crisis was over.

The Post observed around a dozen or more workers or shelter residents leaving the building this week.

“I imagine that they are cleaning and making repairs now to give the building back to the owner,” said one female asylum seeker from Venezuela, who asked not to use her name.

She hadn’t landed a new place to stay since she left the shelter last week, she said.

“To be honest, the situation is complicated because they are closing most of the shelters. I sleep where the night takes me. Sometimes in the street. My fate is in God’s hands,” she said.

The shelter has been plagued with issues since it opened in May 2023 – with police sources saying the Venezuelan street gang Tren de Aragua organized moped robbery crews from the hotel.

Several shelter residents were arrested for a $5,300 shoplifting spree and a 12-year-old ringleader of a Central Park robbery crew was accused of taking part in the assault of two NYPD officers back in May.

“Out of 100 men coming from Venezuela, 80 are bad and 20 are good,” one migrant outside the Roosevelt told The Post earlier this week. “The problem is that the good people get screwed and pay the price for the bad people.”

The Post previously reported that the hotel could sell for as much as $1 billion after migrants move out. A source told the Post that the property owner – the Pakistani government’s Pakistan International Airlines – were considering replacing the over 100-year-old hotel with a new skyscraper.

It is unclear whether the hotel will begin welcoming guests again.