The Adams administration is moving ahead with controversial plans to force migrant families with children staying in the city’s shelter system to reapply for housing every 60 days, officials announced Monday.
The new rules, officials say, aim to cajole recent arrivals to find new accommodations and mirror a policy that requires single adults migrants city shelters to reapply for their housing every 30 days.
City Hall’s clamp down comes as the number of people living in city shelters facilities has doubled since the migrant crisis began last year: More than 118,000 people — 64,000 of them migrants — currently live in city-run or city-funded facilities.
“With over 64,100 asylum seekers still in the city’s care, and thousands more migrants arriving every week, expanding this policy to all asylum seekers in our care is the only way to help migrants take the next steps on their journeys,” said Mayor Eric Adams in a statement. “This step builds on our work providing notices and intensified casework services to adults in the city’s care to help them move to alternative housing.”
The policy has been in the works for some time and sources had said the announcement could have come as soon as last Friday.
It comes as the tempo of arrivals has surged in recent weeks after a respite in the summer, putting the city’s safety net under renewed pressure.
“It’s pointless and destructive to put an arbitrary time limit on shelter stays,” said Joshua Goldfein, a top lawyer representing Legal Aid in the ongoing fight over the right to shelter.
“The one thing that kids have in their lives that’s stable is their school placement, and now we’re going to disrupt that and throw their lives into chaos,” he added. “It will also upend the operations of their schools as kids come in and out on a daily basis.”
Additionally, Adams’ administration provided new details about the size and scope of the shelter facility it plans to set up at Brooklyn’s Floyd Bennett Field — the largely abandoned former naval air base that was taken over by the National Park Service — which is the subject of a legal battle.
Officials plan to house up to 500 families there in a ‘semi-congregate’ facility, which may conflict with state regulations that each household get an individual room.
A set of legal settlements and court decisions known as the ‘right to shelter’ requires officials to provide accommodations for any person in need, regardless of citizenship.
That rules remains in force, meaning that if migrants continue to reapply shelter that officials must find them space.
Lawyers for City Hall are pressing their case in Manhattan Supreme Court to trim back or suspend the regulations.
The next hearing over their request is scheduled for Thursday.