Advocates are pushing back against New York Mayor Eric Adams’ plan to reverse a 40-year precedent that requires local officials to provide a bed for any homeless person who asks for one as the state’s migrant crisis continues to roil the shelter system.
Overall, more than 117,000 migrants have come to New York over the past several months. In response, the city has spent over $2 billion to open 210 emergency sites where migrants can enroll in health insurance, child services, and immigration legal services.
However, officials are asking for a temporary suspension of the state’s Right to Shelter, created in 1981 by a consent decree resolving the case of Callahan v. Carey. On October 3, Adams’ administration asked New York Supreme Court Justice Erika Edwards to allow the city to set aside the legal obligation as it attempts to deal with the staggering influx of migrants.
“The Judgment’s onerous terms are demonstrably ill-suited to present circumstances and restrain the City at a time when flexibility to deal with the emergency is paramount,” Daniel Perez, an assistant corporation counsel, wrote in a letter to Edwards. “The Consent Judgment – entered over 40 years ago under far different circumstances – has become outmoded and cumbersome in the face of the present migrant crisis.”
But advocates say this plan, if successful, could worsen living conditions for migrants and the more than 84,000 homeless people in New York City.
“If the Mayor truly wants to address this emergency with the efficiency it demands, he should immediately advance measures to prevent entry into shelters and to expedite placements out of them,” the nonprofit Family Homelessness Coalition said.
“These include expediting access to and retention of public benefits through adequate staffing and new technology, implementing recently passed CityFHEPS legislation, removing administrative barriers to placements into housing, and expanding access to HPD homeless set-aside units to improve housing stability for a greater number of families,” it continued.
Advocates and the Mayor’s office have been embroiled in a battle of wills for several months. Adams seems to be seeking a swift and efficient resolution to the shelter challenges posed by the influx of migrants, while advocates are seeking to ensure that the city’s most vulnerable populations aren’t left behind in the process.
Adams’ administration has argued that its request to suspend the Right to Shelter would only apply to single individuals, not families with children. It has also said the Callahan decision constrained its “flexibility” to solve the problem, according to Perez’s letter.
But advocates say there are other ways to help the migrants that do not require the city to end the Right to Shelter.
For instance, the Legal Aid Society said the city could provide Temporary Protected Status for the migrants. This would allow them to get jobs and access a wider net of social services.
“If the Mayor, as well as Governor Hochul, were serious about bolstering shelter capacity to manage increased demand, City Hall would implement the policies that we have called for since last year instead of seeking to advance proposals that would inevitably bring incalculable suffering to those in need,” the Legal Aid Society said in a statement. “And the Governor would show true leadership by implementing a comprehensive statewide decompression and resettlement plan and by overriding the bigoted executive orders in upstate counties aimed at precluding new arrivals.”
The strife between the two groups doesn’t seem like it will be resolved any time soon. In a recent radio interview, former President Bill Clinton said New York should try to give the migrants work visas as soon as possible. But that ignores the fact that 40% of New York’s unhoused people are employed, yet employment alone hasn’t helped them leave the streets behind.
Instead, advocates are worried that migrants will continue to live in public spaces and make encampments that have caused so much strife in other areas of the country like Los Angeles, Denver, and Seattle. This could subject them to increased encounters with the police and threaten their ability to live a dignified life.
“This is the City’s most significant and damaging attempt to retreat on its legal and moral obligation to provide safe and decent shelter for people without homes since that right was established 42 years ago,” the Legal Aid Society said. “Street homelessness would balloon to a level unseen in our city since the Great Depression.”
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