NYC Moves to Suspend ‘Right to Shelter’ for Migrants

New York City is difficult a singular authorized settlement that requires it to present emergency housing to anybody who asks for it, as the town’s shelter system strains underneath a big inflow of worldwide migrants who’ve arrived since final yr.

The metropolis filed a request late Tuesday asking a courtroom to permit it to droop the requirement when there’s a state of emergency the place the shelter inhabitants of single adults will increase at a fast fee.

The submitting got here as Mayor Eric Adams embarks on a four-day journey by Latin America, beginning Wednesday in Mexico, the place he mentioned he’ll discourage folks from coming to New York, telling them the town’s shelter system is at capability and its sources are overwhelmed.

The metropolis has been shifting to droop the so referred to as proper to shelter for months underneath the surge of migrants, arguing the requirement was by no means supposed to be utilized to a humanitarian disaster equivalent to the newest inflow.

The shelter requirement has been in place for greater than 4 a long time in New York City, following a authorized settlement struck in 1981 that required the town to present short-term housing for each homeless individual. No different huge metropolis in America has such a requirement.

“With more than 122,700 asylum seekers having come through our intake system since the spring of 2022, and projected costs of over $12 billion for three years, it is abundantly clear that the status quo cannot continue,” Adams, a Democrat, mentioned in an announcement. “New York City can’t proceed to do that alone.”

Adams had heralded the shelter requirement at first of the disaster as a show of the town’s empathy towards asylum seekers. In the months since, his rhetoric has hardened as the town has spent greater than a billion {dollars} to hire area in resorts, erect massive emergency shelters and supply authorities providers for migrants who arrive with out housing or jobs.

“This issue will destroy New York City,” Adams mentioned final month.

The mayor has additionally lately tightened New York shelter guidelines by limiting grownup migrants to simply 30 days in city-run services amid overcrowding.

Josh Goldfein, a workers lawyer at The Legal Aid Society, mentioned the town’s request, if profitable, could be disastrous for the town.

“What is the alternative? If we do not have a right to shelter, if we are turning people away from the shelter system, if people are now living in the streets, in the subways, in the parks, is that the outcome that they want?” he mentioned. “That is something we have not seen in decades. I don’t think any New Yorker wants to see that. I don’t think city officials want to see that but that will be the result if they were to prevail here.”