City administration officials on Thursday can expect a grilling on Mayor Eric Adams’ hotly contested plan to slow growth of the city’s shelter population by limiting stays for single, adult migrants to 60 days.
City councilmembers have complained they have been kept out of the loop on the initiative, the subject of a Council Committees on Immigration and General Welfare oversight hearing, at 1 p.m. in City Hall.
Councilmember Shahana Hanif, Immigration Committee chair, said the only details she’s heard have come from media coverage, and piecemeal conversations with city officials while touring the city’s temporary respite centers for migrants.
“It’s been a very opaque process,” Hanif said. “On one hand, even if they don’t tell us under oath, the public is also witnessing the opaqueness and the lack of transparency that the administration has had around this conversation.”
She added: “We deserve transparency from our bureaucracy.”
Home for new arrivals
Over 57,300 new migrants and counting are now living in city shelters.
Adams said on Wednesday the number is expected to rise to over 100,000 by the end of June 2025.
Under the mayor’s plan, single, adult migrants will be offered the chance to reapply for housing after the 60-day limit. But questions remain about how the new arrivals will be notified, what agency – or agencies – are in charge of the rollout, and how new migrants will fare once removed.
“I want to know: Where do you think these folks are going to go?” said Councilmember Gale Brewer, chair of the Oversight Committee, who has been monitoring the placement and conditions in migrant shelters.
City officials have already begun alerting migrants in the shelter system of the new policy.
One 60-day notice, with a July date and written in Spanish, suggests the newcomers consider options beyond New York City.
The notice, which was obtained by Gothamist, states that the city would provide assistance traveling to other locations. It asks…
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