Animal care shelters in New York City are reaching capacity. Cheddar News spoke to the director of Animal Care Centers of NYC, the largest in the city, who said it's been the worst she's seen in years. The shelter said it's seen a 20% spike in animals.

<div class="block">Animal care shelters in New York City are reaching capacity. Cheddar News spoke to the director of Animal Care Centers of NYC, the largest in the city, who said it&#39;s been the worst she&#39;s seen in years. The shelter said it&#39;s seen a 20% spike in animals.</div>

Wake Up With Cheddar

Animal Care Shelters Reaching Capacity

Now there's a lot of animals out there that need help finding their forever homes as we highlight each week on our segment. Shutter pause by the way that airs every Friday. Well, now the animal care shelters right here in New York City say it's a capacity. Carmen Ground has more. Katie Hansen is used to seeing animals stay for about a week until they're adopted. Now, the average stay is about 13 days. This is the worst I've seen in years. Animal care centers of New York City is the largest rescue shelter in the city that takes all animals left abandoned by their owners. Hanson says the shelter has seen a 20% spike in animals. She believes it's due to the economy right now. AC has about 350 animals in its care. Hansen says the shelter is now at capacity this weekend. For instance, we were able to get out 155 animals, which is great. However, during that same amount of time, we took in 230 animals. She says work offices, closets and hallways are now being used to store animals. We're trying. But I mean, if there's no space. We're running out of options if you're not ready or financially able to adopt. Right now. The staff here says there's other ways New Yorkers can help. Volunteering is free. You can donate things that we need like linens and food. But one thing which would really help and cost zero is to share our information on your social media pages. I mean, that gets the word out. Most of the animals here are ready to be adopted because they've lived with families. But she says if the influx doesn't slow down, the shelter may have to start making some difficult decisions. This is why we adopted our animals. Our thanks to Carmen Grant for that report. It's also so important to adopt, not shop, stay with, wake up with chatter for our chatter, pause segments to see how you can adopt a furry friend for yourself. Again, that's every Friday morning. He mentions that obviously sharing on social media, which helps. But if you really want to help out all these shelters, which are really at capacity, foster one of these animals and it gets them out of those locations and it gets another animal inside that location and you can, and that dog can go or that pet can go to numerous different places. And the shelter helps financially if you foster an animal.