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By Greg B. Smith and Gwynne Hogan, The City
Mayor Eric Adams on Tuesday asked a court to temporarily suspend the city’s decades-old practice of offering shelter to any adult who asks, proposing that the protocol deserves an emergency pause while the city grapples with the still-ongoing wave of asylum seekers who have arrived in New York for more than a year.
In a letter to Manhattan State Supreme Court, Assistant Corporation Counsel Daniel Perez asserted that if the court grants the city’s request to suspend the 1980s court decree guaranteeing a right to shelter, “The City will simply have the same obligations as all other jurisdictions throughout New York State. And the City will have significantly more flexibility in its response to the present crisis.”
The city’s application outlines conditions under which the right to shelter would be suspended: Either the governor or the mayor would have to declare a state of emergency, and the average number of single adults in city shelters would have to be 50% greater than the daily average over the past two years.
The modification, if approved by a judge, would mark the first major change to a practice that’s been on the books since 1981 when the city agreed to settle a lawsuit filed by the Legal Aid Society to provide shelter to any adult who requested it.
The so-called right to shelter codified in the case, Callahan v. Carey, has emerged as a flashpoint after thousands of migrants first began flooding the city’s shelter system in the spring of 2022, initially mostly from South and Central America and now from all over the world.
As of Tuesday, Mayor Adams said the total number of asylum seekers who’ve arrived in New York since the diaspora began has topped 122,000. The mayor has warned that the ongoing wave, which now amounts to about 3,000 new arrivals a week, will “destroy” the city if the federal government doesn’t intervene to stem the flow and arrange for a more equitable distribution of migrants around the nation.
Adams’ Department of Law argued that the right-to-shelter commitment agreed to 42 years ago is “outmoded and cumbersome” and “has unnecessarily deprived policy makers of much-needed flexibility” to confront a crisis that could not have been imagined in 1981.
Shortly after his Department of Law filed this request, Mayor Adams issued a statement emphasizing that the Callahan decree “was never intended to apply to the extraordinary circumstances our city faces today.”
Now estimating the projected cost for city taxpayers to address this crisis at $12 billion over three years, he asserted, “It is abundantly clear that the status quo cannot continue.” More conservative estimates from the city comptroller’s office put the amount closer to $5.3 billion.
The filing by Perez took a different approach from the administration’s previous approach.
Last year the Adams administration asked the court for a broad waiver to the right to shelter requirement to allow the city to determine whether it could provide shelter based on the resources it had at its disposal.
That motion reopened the decades-old case but was never resolved. Last week Adams announced he intended to file a new modification request, and the judge assigned to the case, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Erika Edwards, ordered him to do so by Tuesday. She then recused herself from the case, stating that she wanted to avoid potential conflict because “it may appear” that she has an unspecified “motive to favor one party over another.” A new judge has yet to be appointed to the case.
The Legal Aid Society and the Coalition for the Homeless issued a joint statement calling the city’s move “the most significant and damaging attempt to retreat on its legal and moral obligation.” They warned if granted by a judge, the move would allow the city to “end the Right to Shelter as we know it.”
“The City would have the ability to declare an emergency, and effectively end the Right to Shelter for thousands of New Yorkers — including working poor individuals who rely on the shelter system and, alarmingly, individuals who rely on disability benefits,” they said. “This abhorrent and unnecessary maneuver is a betrayal of the City’s commitment towards ensuring that no one is relegated to living — or dying — on the streets of our city.”
In his statement accompanying the request, Mayor Adams stated the modification “is not seeking to terminate” the agreement reached under the Callahan consent decree.
‘Close the Borders’
The city’s latest request comes as the number of people staying in shelters continues to climb to historic heights. As of Sept. 24, a record 115,200 people were staying in city shelters including 61,400 migrants, spread out all across the five boroughs in 210 emergency shelters.
In recent months, city officials have ramped up steps to try to discourage people from staying in shelters, including reducing the amount of time adult migrants could stay down to 60 days, then down to just 30 days, before they have to return to the intake center to seek another cot.
Adams and his top staff have resorted to increasingly alarmist rhetoric to describe the situation. Adams has said repeatedly migrants were ”destroying” New York City and over the weekend, Chief Advisor Ingrid Lewis-Martin urged President Joe Biden to “close the borders.”
“Until you close the borders you need to come up with a full on decompression strategy where you can take all of our migrants and move them throughout our 50 states,” she said in an interview on Pix11. “The right to shelter was intended for our indigenous homeless population, so we argue that we should not have to shelter all of these immigrants.”
At a press conference Tuesday, Adams walked back her remarks.
“We believe the borders should remain open. That’s the official position of this city,” he said.
While the city has taken steps to attempt to dissuade adult migrants from staying in shelters, the vast majority of migrants in city care are in families with children. The latest tallies released to the City Council in August indicated that of nearly 60,000 migrants in city facilities, 44,148 were parents and children.
But thus far the city has refrained from issuing 60-day or 30-day notices to families with children, though officials have been mulling this as an option, THE CITY reported.
At Tuesday’s press briefing Deputy Mayor Anne Williams-Isom said more than 400 people were waiting at the Roosevelt Hotel for a place to sleep and city officials said they expected more lines to form outside the migrant arrival center there in the coming days, as they had over the summer. Adams, who has announced plans to travel to Mexico, Ecuador and from Bogotá in Colombia to the Darién Gap to further dissuade migrants traveling to New York City, issued an ominous warning.
“New Yorkers are going to start to see visibly what being out of room means,” he said, refusing to provide specifics. “We are out of room. We’re getting ready to take a real shift in this whole crisis.”
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It’s a “Consent” Judgment, which means the City agreed to it. And months ago when this began, the City and the Governor “agreed” to accept anyone and everyone, and criticized anyone (especially the Governor of Texas) who thought otherwise. Then the City “agreed” to take in bus after bus. This is the Mayor’s own doing.
Extending these “rights” to people who are not citizens is absurd. The real question is why isn’t Jerry “pants” Nadler, Chuckles Schumer, or any of the rest of our leaders in the Federal government doing anything about this at the federal level? Allowing millions of people into the country who have no education, and no skills only hurts us, especially our own low-income citizens. These are people coming here for economic reasons not because they are being persecuted. They should not be granted asylum or even temporary status. Misinformed and misplaced compassion is killing our city and our country.
Well said.
Both Chuck and Jerry have the math skills to know this is not sustainable. They also both know the only chance of them being unseated is by an attack from the left. While it would be unlikey, doing nothing about enforcing the border keeps the chances low.
They’re too busy defending our unalienable rights by showing up to protests against…tall buildings. Because, you know…”the law.”
I’m confused by the tone of the article. “Alarmist rhetoric “? The city is really drowning with these migrants, Adams is right to sound the alarm.
However he is inconsistent. One day he criticizes the border policy under the president, the next day it is the old song blaming Republicans.
Adams’ back and forth attitude won’t accomplish anything.
The situations is confusing because the Mayor is pandering too many different constituencies. He is pandering to the hotel industry which now has guaranteed income with a 100% occupancy rate. He is pandering to the city labor unions because he said truthfully the migrants will create high paying union jobs to service the social needs of this migrants. Then he has to pretend to care for ordinary citizens who don’t fit into one of those two categories.
Therefore he offer sno solutions, because the status quo fits him fine..
Obviously that antiquated law should be removed. We should strengthen our city by also forbidding anyone to work without US citizenship. Then non US citizens would leave. You think that sounds harsh? Most countries do the same. I worked at Credit Suisse for a time. In Switzerland all the employees at the company had to be Swiss citizens. The servers had to be in Switzerland, they couldn’t even be accessed from outside the country. In short the Swiss operation was all Swiss. They take of their own first.
Even if they pause the rule, folks are still heading up here in endless streams of buses. So what’s the plan??
Turn the buses back. If they do come, arrest everyone who gets off the bus. Deport them.
Do this enough times until the message becomes clear.
We have to insist that asylum seekers apply from their own country. We need to establish a new policy that anyone caught sneaking into the US.will never gain citizenship (or asylum). It’s essential not to reward those who break the law. We are doing the opposite now and that’s why we have a crisis.
Interesting. Lewis-Martin implores the Biden administration to close the borders and until they do, to come up with a policy to disperse the “migrants.” She is corrected by Adams who says that NY supports “keeping the border open.” Memo to Adams, the Biden administration insists the border is closed, and having seen what is happening, I think only those NYers furthest to the left (and without basic economics skills) support an open border. These guys can’t even get their stories straight.
My, how far we Democrats have come! Five years ago we were protesting in airports wearing “Abolish ICE” t-shirts. Now we’re the ones begging Biden to close the border!
Marta, please don’t confuse the far left fringe of the Democratic party for the base. I’m the base. I support a full immigration overhaul and so does the rest of the Democratic party. I’m incredibly frustrated with Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and the rest of my party leadership.
It looks like he’s begun to listen: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/05/white-house-waives-26-laws-for-us-mexico-border-wall-construction.html
Marta, I truly hope so. Apparently Venezuela is so messed up that there are extremely few commercial flights there, which makes deportation quite expensive. In my opinion, deportation is less expensive than funding months of food and shelter. We need to invest in deportation flights and change asylum laws to require applications to be approved while the seeker is still in their home country. We must stop rewarding lawbreakers.
Meteorological models predict a cold and snowy winter here this year, as does the Farmer’s Almanac. There are tens of thousands of new arrivals from countries who’ve never seen a flake of snow or freezing temperatures in their lives. Seeking shelter will take on a new and desperate meaning. Things seem to be going from bad to worse on many fronts…
Maybe the wonder of the winter snow will keep them alive in awe to be in the greatest city of the world
Where is Nadler????
Adams still wants open borders. The migrant crisis will not end if the border policy stays the same. Close the border to stop this invasion of illegal migrants . Adams is doing a terrible job as mayor and he does not take criticism well. I don’t think he will be elected for a second term.