Why a $25 Million Plan to Relocate N.Y.C. Migrant Families Is Struggling

In a tidy suburban apartment complex on Long Island, a Venezuelan mother of two surveyed her new home and declared herself blessed.

Sury Saray Espine and her family had spent 13 months in a homeless shelter in New York City. Now, in early February, they were moving into a one-bedroom in Central Islip with a galley kitchen and access to a swimming pool.

Best of all, the state would pay their rent for a year, through a resettlement program designed to house 1,250 migrant families at a fraction of the cost of keeping them in New York City’s overflowing shelters.

The family’s experience, however, has been an anomaly.

The state’s Migrant Relocation Assistance Program has failed to live up to expectations, moving only 174 households into permanent homes outside New York City since it began last July.

“Man, do I wish that program was working better,” Jackie Bray, the state emergency services commissioner, said in November. “That program is not at this point succeeding. And that’s a huge disappointment to us.”

By contrast, the state of Illinois, which launched a comparable program in December 2022, says it has moved 4,697 households into apartments — 27 times as many as New York.