Mayor Eric Adams cut the time that adult migrants can stay at city-run shelters in half on Friday — chopping the max stays from 60 days to 30 days to get a handle on the constant influx of asylum seekers into the Big Apple.
“We appreciate the support we have received so far from our state and federal partners, but with more than 60,000 asylum seekers still in our care and without additional help, we will be forced to continue making difficult decisions,” Mayor Eric Adams said.
“Today’s announcement is another step in our efforts to help asylum seekers take the next step in their journeys,” he added.
Asylum seekers will now be given one month to find housing while the city provides “intensified casework services.”
Migrants can keep reapplying afꦰter the deadline passes but they would have to return to the Asylum Seeker Arrival Center to get back into the system, which could see them sent to 🐟hotels upstate.
The new policy only applies to adult migrants while the rules for migrant families have been left unchanged, despite City Hall kicking around internally capping their stay at 6♔0 days instead of 🌃an unlimited allowance.
The city has already issued roughly 13,000 two-month eviction n🔯otices to migrants in the s🦩helter system, which are set to expire this weekend.
Councilwoman Diana Ayala (D-Manhattan/The Bronx), who chairs the committee that oversees the Department of Homeless Services, called the move “disastrous.”
“Thirty days is absolutely not enough time for anyone to find quality housing,” Ayala said. “That’s 10 times worse for someone who’s here seeking asylum and may not have access to family.”
A City Council spokesman said the change coꦚuld lead to delays in migrants gဣetting their work visas, which the Adams administration has touted as the quickest way out of the crisis.
“[This] could undermine the ability for asylum seekers to receive work authorization and legal status, as they are moved away from a reliable mailing address to receive paperwork,” they said.
New York City officials though defended the 🔴change as necessary as they deal with a꧅ shelter system that has been massively overwhelmed by the flood of more than 113,000 migrants into the state from the southern border.
“We have now reached a point where we are full and must take action to move people seeking asylum more quickly through our shelter system,” Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services Anne Williams-Isom said. “The accelerated pace of stay in our shelter system will be paired with intensive case management to help people seeking asylum speed up their ability to achieve independence.”
Currently, the city has nearly 60,000 asylum 🐼seekers in its care spread out at more than 200 shelter sites throughout NYC.
Migrants — as with anyone in need in the five boroughs — are guaranteed a bed in the city’s shelter system under New York’s unique “right to shelter” mandate.
The Adams administration has gone to court seeking to curtail the policy, which it says obligates it𝕴 to provide housing to far more people than was ever intended at a cost to tax𒅌payers of billions of dollars.