Adams: NYC will give some migrants 60 days notice to leave shelter system
NEW YORK - With hundreds of migrants arriving daily, New York City will start giving adult asylum seekers in the city's shelter system 60 days notice to find somewhere else to live, Mayor Eric Adams said Wednesday.
"We have no more room in the city," Mayor Eric Adams said.
Officials say they will work to try to connect migrants with other housing options, but if they can’t then migrants will have to wait wherever they can, possibly even in the street, until more shelter space opens back up. Migrants will have to re-apply for an open bed.
The new policy is intended to make room for migrant families with children, Adams said. Caseworkers will help migrants who are asked to vacate find housing and other services, he said, and those who don't find alternative housing within 60 days will have to return to the intake center and reapply for a new placement.
"We must now take additional steps to create urgently needed space for families with children who continue to arrive seeking asylum and help those with us take the next steps to their journey," Adams said at a City Hall news conference. He added, "Our goal is no child, no family sleeping on the streets."
This new policy will only impact adult men and women. This will not affect migrant families with children.
On top of that, a team from the city will also be handing out flyers to migrants at the border which say that there is no guarantee that New York City will be able to provide shelter once they arrive and that housing is very expensive.
"Please consider another city as you make your decision about where to settle in the U.S.," the flyer says in both English and Spanish.
Adams, a Democrat, has scrambled to house the tens of thousands of migrants who have arrived in the city over the past year and has called for more help from the state and federal governments.
The city has rented out entire hotels to house migrants and has also put cots in schools and temporarily housed people in tents, a cruise ship terminal and a former police academy building.
Could NYC house asylum seekers in public schools?
The city is planning to temporarily house migrants in public schools that will be used as shelters while students are on summer vacation.
Adams said more than 54,800 migrants are currently in the city's care, with 300 to 500 more arriving daily. "This cannot continue," Adams said. "It’s not sustainable and we’re not going to pretend as though it is sustainable."
However, opponents to this plan cast doubt on the mayor’s ability to deny migrants shelter – pointing at the right-to-shelter mandate – which requires the city to house anyone who requests a bed.
The mayor’s office is right now trying to challenge the mandate in court.
"Limiting the length of shelter stays for asylum seekers will put more people on the streets and strain other city services including hospitals and sanitation," City Comptroller Brad Lander said in response.
"This is a bad policy that will be directly responsible for leaving families homeless and living on the streets," Murad Awawdeh, executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition, said in a statement. "The new rule is an abhorrent end run on our right to shelter laws, and does not reflect the welcoming values of New York City."
Adams said he was not going to be deterred by potential legal challenges to the new policy.
"The court system is going to do what the court system is going to do," he said.
More than 90,100 migrants have passed through the city since last spring and just last week more than 2,800 new migrants arrived in the city. New York has also opened 188 sites to house migrants, including 13 humanitarian relief centers.
Adams and other New York officials are continuing to call on the federal government to expedite work permits for migrants, so they can afford housing and services.
"What is more anti-American than not allowing people to work?" Adams asked. "All of our ancestors arrived here and what would allow them to go from one level to the next was the ability to work."
A spokesperson for the mayor’s office said they have also offered migrants the option of going upstate to stay at shelters there, but says so far upstate communities have not been welcoming.
They were not able to provide at the time how many migrants have taken them up on their offer to go upstate nor how many spots are available.