A senior Adams administration official said on Thursday that the city is preparing to ask a judge to exempt newly arrived migrants from its right-to-shelter mandate, which requires the city to provide a bed to anyone who asks for one.
“We’re back in court next week to really say, ‘I don’t think that the right to shelter as it was originally written should be applied to this humanitarian crisis in its present form,’” Anne Williams-Isom, the deputy mayor for health and human services, told WNYC’s Brian Lehrer.
Her remarks signal a potentially complicated legal battle around the city’s 40-year-old right-to-shelter mandate, which could have broader implications for undocumented immigrants and their access to safety net services.
The city first sought to change the law in May as thousands of migrants arrived in New York City each month. It has since spent weeks locked in court-ordered negotiations with the state and the Legal Aid Society, which represents homeless New Yorkers, in hopes of reaching a compromise. Homeless advocates and progressive Democrats have vigorously opposed rolling back the right to shelter, which has been credited with minimizing street homelessness.
But as more migrants arrive in the city each week, Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul have expressed growing concern that the right-to-shelter mandate has become an unsustainable policy. Biden administration officials have reportedly described the mandate as a “pull factor” for those who enter the country and are uncertain of where to go.
“Never was there a vision that this would be an unlimited universal right, where the obligation is on the city to house literally the entire world,” Hochul said on Wednesday night during a CNN interview.
More than 110,000 migrants have come to the city over the last year, and around 60,000 are currently living in the city’s shelter system at a cost of billions of dollars annually, according to city officials.
Adams has demanded more help from…
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