Mayor Adams’ administration on Tuesday asked a judge to allow it to suspend the city’s right-to-shelter mandate until the count of single adults seeking shelter from the city drops, laying out in new detail the circumstances when it believes it should be able to disregard the longtime commitment.
The request comes amid the swelling migrant crisis that shows no signs of abating. The city asked for a reprieve from the mandate as long as state- and city-ordered state of emergencies remain in effect, and as long as the number of single adults seeking shelter is at least 50% higher than it was in a two-year period before the city called its state of emergency in October.
The request, made in Manhattan Supreme Court, comes 42 years after the city signed a landmark consent decree requiring it to provide shelter to homeless men who ask for it. Nearly five months ago, the city returned to court to ask if it could modify the agreement, citing the challenge posed by tens of thousands of migrants flooding into the shelter system.
“The City is not seeking to terminate the Consent Judgment; we seek only the immediate relief that present circumstances demand,” the city’s assistant corporation counsel, Daniel Perez, said in the Tuesday filing. “As currently written, the Consent Judgment prevents the City and the State from deploying the regulatory flexibility needed to adapt to the evolving nature of this emergency.”
Top Adams administration officials, including the chief City Hall counsel, Lisa Zornberg, are expected to hold a migrant crisis briefing Wednesday afternoon.
When it first asked the judge to suspend right to shelter in May, the Adams administration did not provide specific scenarios when it thought it would be appropriate to lift the mandate.
Homeless advocates and liberal city lawmakers have fiercely pushed back against the Adams administration’s approach, especially after the city failed to provide beds to a crowd of asylum seekers who spent several summer nights sleeping outside a Midtown intake center.
In court, the Legal Aid Society has pushed the city and the state to provide more support for the migrants. In 1981, the state also signed the right-to-shelter agreement.
Adams and Gov. Hochul have maintained the city lacks the resources to apply right-to-shelter protections to every migrant who arrives in the city.
The city’s right-to-shelter mandate is unique among major American cities. City officials have said the right to shelter appears to be a driver behind the cavalcade of asylum seekers streaming from America’s southwestern border toward the five boroughs.
The Coalition for the Homeless and the Legal Aid Society, which are fighting the Adams administration in court over its push to roll back right-to-shelter, blasted the Tuesday filing as City Hall’s “most significant and damaging attempt to retreat on its legal and moral obligation to provide safe and decent shelter for people without homes since that right was established 42 years ago.”
“If successful, the City would have the ability to declare an emergency, and effectively end the Right to Shelter for thousands of New Yorkers — including working poor individuals who rely on the shelter system and, alarmingly, individuals who rely on disability benefits,” the groups said in a joint statement. “This abhorrent and unnecessary maneuver is a betrayal of the City’s commitment towards ensuring that no one is relegated to living — or dying — on the streets of our city.”
Since spring 2022, more than 122,000 migrants have arrived in the city, and as of last week, the city was still supporting roughly — 61,000 — of those migrants, according to the Adams administration. The city’s shelter population has doubled since last summer.
The recent wrangling in the right-to-shelter case has opened divides within New York’s Democratic leaders. Adams’ office and Hochul’s office have sparred in court filings over the state’s responsibility to the asylum seekers — with the city pushing for more state aid, and the state portraying the city’s efforts to support the migrants as sloppy and slow.
Adams and Hochul, two moderate Democrats, have insisted they remain on good terms. But they have publicly disagreed on the course of the right-to-shelter case, with City Hall urging the state to force upstate counties to accept some migrants, and the governor’s office refusing.
Hochul has also taken the position that the state Constitution does not reserve a statewide right to shelter, apparently putting her at odds with state Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat and former Legal Aid lawyer. James typically serves as the state’s lawyer but has declined to represent the state in the right-to-shelter case.
