Eric Adams seeks court approval to suspend NYC’s ‘right to shelter’ rule in wake of migrant crisis
There’s almost no more room at the inn says New York City.
Mayor Eric Adams is seeking a suspension of the city’s “right to shelter” regulation as it struggles to provide housing,❀ food and legal services to over 40,000 mܫigrants with limited federal assistance.
The New York City Law Department submitted an application on Tuesday night requesting that the Big Apple’s decades-old “right to shelter” regulation is modified, explaining that the surge of migrants has placed “unprecedented demands” on the city’s resources.
“Given that we’re unable to provide care for an unlimited number of people and are already overextended, it is in the best interest of everyone, including those seeking to come to the United States, to be upfront that New York City cannot single-handedly provide care to everyone crossing our border,” said Adams in a statement, defending the move.
“Being dishonest about this will only result in our system collapsing, and we need our government partners to know the truth and do their share.”
The city wants the rule waived when “the City of New York acting through the New York City Department of Homeless Services (“DHS”) lacks the resources and capacity to establish and maintain sufficient shelter sites, staffing, and security to provide safe and appropriate shelter,” wrote the Law Department’s Jonathan Pines in the application to Deputy Chief Administrative Judge Deborah Kaplan for the New York City Courts.
“This ongoing flood of asylum-seekers arriving in New York City from the southern border represents a crisis of national, indeed international dimension; yet, the challenges and fiscal burden of this national crisis have fallen almost exclus✅ively💯 upon the City,” he continued.
“These unprecedented demands on the City’s shelter resources confront the City Defendant with challenges never contemplated, foreseeable, or indeed even remotely imagined by any signatory to the Callahan Judgment,” he noted, referencing the 1981 decision that established the right to shelter provision.
Since last spring, the city has received over 73,000 migrants and is currently housing over 44,000 individuals in upwards of 150 “emergency” shelters or hotels.
The city’s total shelter currently stands at 93,000 individuals, over 81,000 of whom are being housing in shelters run by the city’s Department of Social Services, according to the filing.
The migrant population accounts for roughly half that figure and Office of Management and Budget Director Jacques Jiha said earlier during a City Council hearing Tuesday that soon the city “will be caring for more asylum seekers on a nightly basis than we had people in our entire DHS shelter system last year.”
City budget officials estimate Gotham 🔴will be on the hook for a $4.3 to $4.5๊ billion price tag by June 2024.
Less than $40 million has been greenlit by the federal government to help offset the crisis’ costs, even though Adams requested over $650 million.
“The unfortunate reality is that the City has extended itself further than its resources will allow, placing in jeopardy the City’s obligations to manage its finances in order to maintain critical infrastructure and services and provide for the well-being of all of its citizens,” wrote Pines.
Queens Councilman Robert Holden, a De🌳mocrat, cheered the 🐈move.
“It’s about time, he should have done it a long time ago,” he told The Post.
“There’s tremendous pressure on his administration, there’s no more room at the inn.”
“If you keep saying you have no more room and then you keep taking them, it’s an undue burden on the taxpayers of New York City and his administration,” he said.
“It’s an effort to find an off-ramp to this crisis, which city tax payers should not bear the burden,” said Council Minority Leader Joe Borelli (R-Staten Island). “If not this, then what is the policy through which the migrant crisis comes to an end?
A spokesman for the state Office ♎of Court Administration told The Post their office does not comment on pending action.
