NYC to open new 2,200-bed shelter despite touting dip in migrant crisis

City officials are prepping an old South Bronx storage facility for up to 2,200 migrant men from the troubled Randall’s Island tent city — all while crowing that the asylum-seeker crisis is waning.

And it’s just around the corner from “The Hub” — one of the Big Apple’s most drug-addled strips.

“Wrong move!” neighborhood resident Serene Bilal told The Post. “You need to work with the people already here. We have issues going on. Why the Bronx? Why pick on the Bronx?

“It’s going to be dangerous,” the 21-year-old videographer said. “We don’t know who these people are. We are not talking about 10 people. We’re talking about thousands. That’s a lot.”

The plans — which got final approval last month, records show — call for the shelter to open next month at 825 E. 141st St. to house migrant men who were at the troubled tent city at Randall’s Island.

The city will pay between $250,000-$340,000 to retrofit the building after approving an emergency contract that did not go through the standard bidding process, records show.

The city was forced to scramble to find space for migrants flooding into the city since 2022, converting old schools and churches into shelters and erecting tent cities at Randall’s Island and at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn — which was shut down by the city over the weekend.

Word of the plan comes after City Hall said the influx of migrants in the five boroughs has slowed significantly as the number of asylum seekers in city shelters tapers off.

City officials announced in October that the massive Randall’s Island encampment — which sources said has become a breeding ground for the violent Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua — will be closed, and made a similar announcement about dismantling another tent city at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn.

Displaced migrants, officials said, would be moved to other shelters.

They neglected to mention the new Bronx facility, which came as a surprise to area merchants and residents, who said crime is already a concern in the neighborhood without an influx of migrants.

Problems in the area include The Hub, a commercial stretch of the borough exposed by The Post where junkies shoot up in the open and dealers peddle their wares without fear of retribution.

“Instead of dismantling open-air drug markets in the Hub, the city is treating the South Bronx as a dumping ground for the endless stream of shelters,” said Bronx Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY).

“The Bronx is treated differently than the rest of the city,” Torres said. “We are treated as the second-class borough of New York City.”

According to city stats, nearly 230,000 migrants have been housed in taxpayer-funded city shelters since the flood of migrants began in 2022, and there are now just over 50,000 still in the system.

For Bronx locals, the migrant shelter plan for their block doesn’t feel like anything’s waning.

“I did not have the faintest idea,” the manager at a local store told The Post. “We are concerned. We have concerns just in general because there are people lingering in the streets and there have been reports of thefts. It’s going to get worse.

“I think they are discarding them in the shadows at the edge of the Bronx where they think people won’t get affected,” said the man, who asked not to be identified. “I’m concerned for the safety of our female workers. I might have to change around some shifts.”

One woman who works an early morning shift in the neighborhood cited the recent deadly arson attack on a sleeping New Jersey woman on a Brooklyn subway train — allegedly by an illegal immigrant.

“That right there scares me,” she said. “You are going to see a bunch of people hanging out, drinking and doing you know what and you have to walk by them to go to the train. We work in a dead-end area and there are no police around here.

“It’s going to create more problems,” she added. “I think it’s going to get more violent.”

A local maintenance worker said the area is already risky without a new migrant shelter in it.

“It’s a dead end,” he said. “People don’t come outside, they stay inside. They are afraid. They rob you down here. You don’t see anyone walking around here at night.”

In an email Tuesday, a rep for City Hall said the shelter was “a temporary move” as officials continue to reduce the number of sites used to house migrants.

“Thanks to our strong management of this unprecedented humanitarian crisis, New York City has seen over six straight months of population decline in our emergency shelter system, allowing us to close 46 migrant shelters in the span of a year,” the rep said.

That, they said, will save taxpayers $2.8 billion.

The city had 263 shelters up and running at the height of the migrant crisis and is now operating 190.