Good morning. It’s Monday. Today we’ll get details on how the city’s so-called right-to-shelter requirement is being scaled back amid the continuing struggle to house thousands of migrants.
Most adult migrants without children will now have to leave shelters in New York City after 30 days unless they meet certain criteria to extend their stay.
That was the most significant change in a legal agreement modifying a longstanding requirement that the city provide shelter to anyone who asks for it. Migrant families with children will not be affected.
The settlement ended months of legal wrangling that began in May, when Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, sought permission to change the 42-year-old consent decree that established New York’s right-to-shelter requirement, which is unique among cities in the U.S.
I asked Luis Ferré-Sadurní, who reports on immigration and the migrant crisis in New York, to explain the changes.
The shelters are overloaded. How will this settlement make a difference?
Officials say this settlement will give the city more flexibility to get migrant adults out of the shelter system. Right now, migrant adults without children make up about 22 percent of the 65,000 migrants in shelters.
It’s important to note that the underlying right-to-shelter requirement that was established more than 40 years ago is still intact. This settlement does not change the fact that New York is the only city in the U.S. with a requirement to provide a bed to anyone who needs it.
The new rules in the settlement are meant to apply very narrowly to the migrant crisis. These rules don’t apply to homeless people who are not recent migrants. The new rules are important to city officials who do not want the migrants in their care staying in the shelter system indefinitely.
So the changes in the settlement are mainly aimed at that 22 percent — roughly 14,000 adult migrants. Will there be a rise in homeless people on the streets?
Not necessarily. For one thing, the settlement allows adult migrants to reapply for a bed in the system if they meet certain requirements. If they can show they are making significant efforts to get out of the system, but still haven’t found a home, the city is required to give them a bed again.
That said, it remains to be seen how the city is going to accomplish this and meet its legal requirements. The city is required to consider extensions on a case-by-case basis. City officials have not said how they’re going to handle all the requests they’re bound to get from migrants who say they need to stay longer than 30 days.
What the city does will be watched closely. The city will put together weekly reports showing how many extensions have been granted and how many have been denied. The lawyers from the Legal Aid Society, who represent the plaintiffs in the case, have said very clearly that they’ll be monitoring the city’s actions and that they are ready to go back to court if they think the city is, for example, denying shelter to people who are actually eligible under the settlement.
What will happen to migrants who reach the 30-day limit and don’t have an exception?
It remains to be seen.
If the city denies their request to stay longer than 30 days, they might not have access to a bed in the shelter system and might have to figure out some other living arrangements. That could mean that some are effectively left homeless. But Legal Aid lawyers note there’s nothing in the agreement preventing a migrant from trying to apply for a bed again, even after his or her extension request has been turned down.
The 30-day rule is not new. Isn’t the difference that the city can now say no to migrants who want to stay longer than that?
Right. Under the previous rules, adult migrants without children could stay in city shelters for 30 days and could then reapply for another bed, no questions asked.
There have been backlogs. Over the past few months, we’ve seen that adult migrants who reapplied for beds after 30 days have had to wait, sometimes more than a week, for the city to get them another bed. Many of them were effectively homeless while they were waiting. Some had to wait in the cold outside the processing center in the East Village where they go to reapply. Often they were made to sleep on the floor of what the city calls “waiting rooms,” which are basically the lobbies of shelter buildings where they’re trying to be assigned another bed.
The agreement says exceptions will be made only under “extenuating circumstances.” What are they?
Adult migrants would be able to stay longer than 30 days if they can prove to the city that they’re making “significant efforts” to get out of the shelter system and find housing but haven’t yet. They could show that they’ve applied for a job or a job-training program or that they’ve been searching for an apartment.
They could also stay longer than 30 days if they show that they have plans to leave New York City soon but need a few more days in the shelter. Similarly, if they have an immigration hearing in the next 30 days or a lease for an apartment that starts in the next few weeks but need a place to stay in between, they could stay longer.
All of this is at the discretion of the city.
Does the city have the personnel to process requests for exceptions?
The city already has a heavily staffed infrastructure in place to handle the migrant shelter system across shelters, hotels and dormitories. It remains to be seen if officials will have to redirect some of those resources or hire more people to make sure they can process all this in a timely manner.
There are a lot of open questions here. The next few weeks will be very important to see how this plays out, to see how many people are being denied shelter and what happens to adult migrants who are unable to gain access to the shelter system anymore. Do they end up on the streets? Do they leave New York City? Those are things that advocates for immigrants and for the homeless will be watching for.
Weather
Expect a mostly sunny day in the low 50s. The evening will be mostly cloudy, with temperatures dropping to the mid-30s.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until Sunday (Purim).
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Gun Hill Road
Dear Diary:
My flight from Milan arrived at Kennedy Airport amid torrential downpours. I struggled into the mass of dripping humanity outside the arrivals area.
“I’m here,” said the text from my daughter Karin. “You’ll find me.”
I saw her ancient Toyota at the curb, near a service truck whose driver was struggling to remove a flat tire from her car. The rusted bolts finally gave way with the help of a couple of cabbies and a sledgehammer.
Unfortunately, we soon found that the temporary spare was no good.
“Where do you have to go?” someone asked.
“New London,” I said.
It was 10 o’clock on a Sunday night, and the consensus was that we were doomed.
“Think you can make it to the Bronx?” someone asked. “There’s an all-night tire repair on Gun Hill Road.”
“Yeah,” a cabby said, “I know that place.”
A quick search online turned up the number, and a sleepy voice answered: “Get here before I take my break at midnight.”
Off we went to the Gun Hill Road exit off Route I-95, and then west to a dimly lit storefront with a jack on the sidewalk out front. A soul food restaurant was open next door.
“I’m starving,” Karin said, making a beeline for the restaurant. I dashed after her and soon found her, with her purple hair, chatting with the cashier, a young woman with bright blue hair.
The food was great and the new tire was reasonably priced. Having once lived nearby on Decatur Avenue, I felt as if I had come home again.
— Stu Reininger
