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Which U.S. cities or states provided hotel rooms to migrants and why?
Executive Summary
New York City, several large U.S. cities and some states booked or leased hotel rooms to house migrants and asylum seekers in response to surges since 2022; the move addressed immediate shelter needs, legal obligations and leveraged pandemic-era excess hotel capacity while imposing large public costs. Federal FEMA reimbursement programs also supported emergency sheltering in border and non‑border jurisdictions, but cities reported multibillion-dollar expenditures and complex political tradeoffs as contracts wind down [1] [2] [3].
1. What claim did reporting and fact checks make about hotels turning into migrant shelters — and why it matters
Multiple contemporaneous reports claim that cities including New York City converted thousands of hotel rooms into temporary migrant shelters, sometimes leasing entire properties and contracting with nonprofit shelter operators; these actions were framed as emergency responses to large inflows of asylum seekers after 2022 and as compliance with local legal shelter obligations [1] [4] [5]. The claim matters because it ties housing policy to migration policy and municipal budgets: cities presented hotels as immediate capacity to prevent people from sleeping on the street and to meet court- or statute-based shelter duties, while critics emphasized the fiscal and market impacts of diverting hotel inventory from tourists to social service functions [4] [6].
2. Where in the United States hotels were used most visibly — New York as the poster child
New York City is the most thoroughly documented example: reporting and audits showed the city leased roughly 15,750–16,000 hotel rooms across more than 150 hotels to shelter asylum seekers, including large single‑property leases such as the Row NYC and the Roosevelt Hotel, and at peak the city had removed about 16,000 rooms from the tourist market to house migrants and other unhoused populations [1] [5] [6]. Municipal accounting and the Comptroller’s analysis put the average daily hotel cost and combined shelter service per diems into published estimates, signaling that hotel sheltering represented a major, measurable component of the city’s migrant response and overall shelter ecosystem [6].
3. Which other cities and states used hotels, and how federal programs fit in
Beyond New York, reporting and fact checks identify Chicago, Massachusetts, and border jurisdictions among those that used hotels or motels as emergency housing for migrants; Chicago reported tens of thousands settling there since 2022 and Massachusetts disclosed substantial annual spending before scaling back hotel use [7]. At the federal level, FEMA’s Shelter and Services Program reimbursed localities and nonprofits for emergency migrant shelter costs and has been used in 35 communities, including border states like Arizona and Texas as well as inland jurisdictions such as Colorado and New York; the program provided a reimbursement mechanism that helped localities shoulder costs while not directly funding migrants [8] [3].
4. Why cities and owners agreed to hotels-as-shelters: immediate needs and pandemic economics
Cities cited legal shelter obligations and humanitarian necessity as driving immediate conversion of hotel rooms to shelter capacity after large border releases and policy changes, while many hotel owners accepted long‑term leases because pandemic demand had collapsed and municipal contracts offered predictable revenue when tourist business was weak [4] [5]. Financial auditing and reporting documented the scale of public spending — New York projected multibillion dollar expenditures over multiple years — and municipal leaders framed hotel contracts as stopgap measures pending more permanent housing solutions [1] [2].
5. Political fights, accountability questions and the evolving trajectory
The use of hotels became politically contentious: critics and some federal legislators argued the federal government should assume greater responsibility or pursue stricter immigration enforcement rather than funding municipal sheltering, while local advocates warned that ending hotel contracts without alternatives would displace vulnerable people [7]. By 2025 some cities began winding down hotel contracts — New York announced several hotels would cease receiving taxpayer dollars as migration pressures eased — prompting questions about the fiscal legacy for municipalities and the future of the affected hotel properties and neighborhoods [2].
6. What's missing from the public conversation and the open policy questions
Reporting documents scale and costs but leaves unresolved operational and long‑term questions: the duration of stays, outcomes for residents who accessed work or services while in hotels, the exact administrative split between city, state and FEMA funding streams, and how displaced market hotel inventory will be repurposed. Audits and fact checks highlight substantial public expenditures and program complexity, but further data on post‑hotel housing trajectories, cost comparisons to other shelter models, and the full federal-state-municipal funding breakdown remain necessary to evaluate whether hotel leasing was the most effective or sustainable emergency response [6] [7] [3].