Fewer than 30 adult migrants per day are typically accepting a city-offered bus or plane ticket out of New York City, and hundreds more are ending up with no shelter bed to sleep in for the night, newly released data shows.
Mayor Eric Adams’ administration has said its rule restricting shelter stays for adult migrants to 30 days is alleviating a strained shelter system, making room for newer arrivals and helping slash projected migrant spending.
But data obtained by Gothamist through a Freedom of Information Law request shows that on average, just 2% of adult migrants maxing out their shelter limits each day are leaving the city. Meanwhile, more than 80% are turned away because no shelter beds are available, and are sent to waiting rooms in other parts of the city to try again the next day. Many migrants have said they’re choosing to sleep on the street, the subway or in parks instead.
Adams’ policies are under growing scrutiny by city councilmembers who recently called his shelter limit notices “inhumane” and are seeking to ban any restrictions on homeless shelter stays.
“The best way to serve the population who are being directed to reticketing to St. Brigid’s [in the East Village] is to provide them with real case management so they can get what they need to move on,” said Joshua Goldfein, a staff attorney with the nonprofit Legal Aid Society. “Using an arbitrary deadline for people to have to leave shelter is disruptive and counterproductive.”
He said putting migrants on a waitlist and offering them a chair in a waiting room is still a violation of the city’s decades-old right-to-shelter law that guarantees a shelter bed to anyone who asks for one.
The city began issuing 30-day notices to adult migrants across all city-funded shelters last September, and later redirected those with nowhere to live to the so-called reticketing site at St. Brigid’s, a former Catholic School next to Tompkins Square Park. Lines there typically wrap around the block,…
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