Flooded Out, the Little Shop of Kindness Again Helping Migrants in New Home

After a five month search, a good will store for migrants that was forced to vacate its former base near Bryant Park in September has finally found a new home–on the Upper East Side.

The Little Shop of Kindness provides goods and services to migrants in need. Previously located in a reconverted reading room of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church on West 40th, the shop closed on Fri., Sep. 29, when the ceiling of the shop caved in due to extreme rain.

Up to 200 asylum seekers a day were coming through to pick up gently-used clothing, enjoy a free lunch and get a little help navigating the asylum bureaucracy. But the torrential rainstorm put an end to that help.

“It was raining as hard inside the shop as it was outside,” recalled Ilze Thielmann, the retired corporate lawyer who became the CEO of the Little Shop of Kindness after first serving as a volunteer in the early days of the migrant crisis. “The result was nothing short of devastating,” she said of the flood.

Thielmann said the extensive damage forced her to abandon the site and search for a new home for the shop through the New Year. She said she finally found a new place to base the operation, thanks to the help of a generous benefactor.

The shop tries to create the look of an upscale boutique and provides everything from clothes to free lunches for migrants, many of whom are bussed from the southern border with little more than the clothes on their backs, she said.

Mayor Eric Adams has said over 170,000 migrants have landed in the city, with over 60,000 in the city’s homeless shelters. Some weeks the city is seeing the arrival of up to 4,000 asylum-seeking migrants. He was recently in Albany looking for another $1.5 billion from New York State on top of the $2.5 billion that Gov. Kathy Hochul has earmarked for the city to handle the migrant surge.

Thielmann formerly was an attorney at a white shoe law firm and initially got involved with LSK in Aug. 2022 when she volunteered with the 501(C)3 Grannies Respond. She, along with volunteers Andrea DeGeorge and Adamma Bah, traveled to the Port Authority bus station to care for migrants arriving on buses. The volunteeres provided food and even paid for migrants’ Ubers to local shelters.

In March 2023, the trio reached out to multiple churches and organizations to house their dream: a one-stop shop for migrants. The Ukrainian Seventh-Day Adventist Church on West 40th responded, and the organization found its first home in the space that was once the church’s reading room.

When I visited the Bryant Park Little Shop in the Fall, the organization was already overwhelmed as it tried to provide clothing and feed up to 200 migrants per day.

“We just don’t have enough,” said Andre DeGeorge. The shop relied solely on donations from New Yorkers, and had received just $20,000 from the city from March to August 2023, according to Thielmann. It was clear how life-changing the Shop was for so many migrants. There, I met Johnny Espina and Zwuhanmys Rovero, a couple from Venezuela who trekked through the Darién Gap. They spoke about their horrific trip through the wilderness to request asylum in the U.S.

“Many drowned,” they said grimly. Housed in the Roosevelt Hotel, they often had cold food to eat and shared one room for themselves and their two daughters. They wore the same clothes which they had arrived in weeks earlier.

“We are very grateful for the shop,” she said in Spanish as DeGeorge placed a sandwich in Rovero and her husband’s hands. The ongoing migrant crisis in New York has put pressure on city and state officials, forcing Adams’ administration to become increasingly reliant upon NGOs like Thielmann’s.

And then the rain came.

Despite their best efforts, volunteers were unable to salvage the shop in September, and migrants were left with one less resource. Another migrant who I met through the shop lamented the shop being forced to close.

“I really feel bad,” one migrant, who preferred not to use her name for security reasons, said. “They were helping a lot of people. They were very helpful and lovely. They gave you energy that life is going to go forward.”

While searching for a new space, Thielmann and her volunteers came up against many roadblocks. She said her organization was unable to afford rent for the large space that they wanted, and she said she also faced discrimination from landlords who did not want unhoused people on their property.

A kind benefactor came to the rescue. The benefactor, who preferred to stay anonymous, agreed to pay $8,000 in rent for a brand new space inside the Avenue Church at 1745 1st Avenue.

“It’s just lovely. You really have to see it to believe it,” Thielmann said. Migrants can make appointments only through an app, while the shop’s old location allowed walk-ins. Thielmann told me the walk-in system caused serious problems, as migrants often lined up overnight to ensure they got the services that they so direly needed.

When migrants arrive, they are walked through the space by a volunteer, who helps them pick out the clothes and goods which they and their families may need. Most volunteers speak Spanish and wear kind expressions, speaking animatedly as they help migrants rebuild their lives. The new space even features a rainbow-colored room dedicated solely to the needs of children.

The old shop had a range of services that Thielmann hopes will soon be operational in the new space— including legal counsel, insurance registration, library cards, school registration, therapy, and daily lunch.

While the UES shop is currently only serving around 60 migrants per day, she hopes that they can get back to their old rate of 150 to 200 daily.

She dreams that the new space will provide new opportunities for migrants and “restore basic human dignity that their circumstances have robbed them of.” Perhaps, she reasons, this could take the form of a shower truck. She won’t stop there, though. She dreams that other organizations will copy hers and join her in her fight to help the unhoused. As she put it, “The longer-term dream is to have Little Shops across the city, state, and country.”

Mimi Lamarre is a freelance journalist and a student at the Columbia University, Graduate School of Journalism.