What to know
New York City is challenging a unique legal agreement that requires it to provide emergency housing to anyone who requests it. The city’s shelter system is under pressure due to a large influx of international immigrants who have arrived since last year. The city filed a request Tuesday night asking a court to allow it to waive the requirement when there is a state of emergency where the population of single adults in shelters increases at a rapid rate.
NEW YORK — New York City is challenging a unique legal agreement that requires it to provide emergency housing to anyone who requests it, as the city’s shelter system is strained by a large influx of international immigrants who have arrived from last year.
The city filed a request Tuesday night asking a court to allow it to waive the requirement when there is a state of emergency in which the population of single adults in shelters increases at a rapid rate.
The presentation came as Mayor Eric Adams embarks on a four-day trip through Latin America, starting Wednesday in Mexico, where he said he will discourage people from coming to New York, telling them that the city’s shelter system is at capacity and its resources are overwhelmed.
The city has been taking steps to suspend the so-called right to housing for months in the face of the surge of migrants, arguing that the requirement was never intended to apply to a humanitarian crisis like the latest influx.
The shelter requirement has been in place for more than four decades in New York City, following a legal settlement reached in 1981 that required the city to provide temporary housing to all homeless people. No other major city in the United States has that requirement.
“With more than 122,700 asylum seekers having passed through our intake system since spring 2022 and projected costs of more than $12 billion over three years, it is abundantly clear that the status quo cannot continue,” Adams said. , a Democrat, in a statement. “New York City can’t keep doing this alone.”
Adams had announced the housing requirement at the beginning of the crisis as a show of the city’s empathy toward asylum seekers. In the months since, her rhetoric has hardened as the city has spent more than $1 billion to rent hotel space, build large emergency shelters and provide government services to immigrants arriving without housing or jobs.
“This issue will destroy New York City,” Adams said last month.
The mayor has also recently tightened New York’s housing rules by limiting adult immigrants to just 30 days in city-run facilities amid overcrowding.
Josh Goldfein, an attorney for The Legal Aid Society, said the city’s request, if successful, would be disastrous for the city.
“What is the alternative? If we don’t have the right to shelter, if we move people away from the shelter system, if people now live on the streets, in the subways, in the parks, is that the result they want? “He said. “That’s something we haven’t seen in decades. I don’t think any New Yorker wants to see that. “I don’t think city officials want to see that, but that will be the result if they prevail here.”
2023-10-05 01:39:49
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