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Migrant Crisis Puts N.Y. ‘Right to Shelter’ Law to the Test


On Thursday, Mayor Eric Adams showed off a new welcome center for thousands of migrants being transported from the border to New York, as proof of how the city is going above and beyond. further to “meet its obligations” towards the newcomers.

Officials said there will be Covid vaccinations for schools, neon sneakers and city identification cards, among a host of other services.

But the mayor’s office has also sent another message in recent days: New York City’s obligations towards newcomers – more than 11,000 migrants have arrived since May, the city said, many who was sent on a bus by Governor Greg Abbott of Texas – pushed the city to a “breaking point”.

Those legal requirements, known as temporary residency rights, have increased the difficulties the city is facing.

“We need help. We are not ashamed to say it,” Mr. Adams said. “We need help and everyone who thinks we’re not doing it right, they should come and show us the right way because we believe we’re doing the right thing.”

Mr. Adams denounced the actions of the governors of Texas, Arizona and Florida as an “inhuman” Republican blueprint and said Thursday that the city is working to fulfill its obligations. about its right to shelter, opened 23 emergency shelters to handle the flow.

But this week, Mr. Adams also began signaling for the first time that the law requiring the city to provide shelter to all arrivals must be re-examined as officials face questions about the date. increasing on how the mayor and Overcrowded homeless service system is managing the crisis. Brendan McGuire, Adams’ chief counsel, said the city will meet its obligations under the shelter-in-law law but the rules governing how that guarantee is implemented should also be considered.

“We are not re-evaluating the right to shelter. We are re-evaluating the city’s activities that have evolved around the right to shelter,” said McGuire. When the law was enacted, no one “projected that more than 10,000 people would take the bus into New York without any connection to New York from abroad,” he added.

McGuire cited the city’s failure on Monday to provide beds for 60 migrants to a men’s receiving facility on East 30th Street in Manhattan, where homeless men are assessed when they first entered the shelter system – the first lapse of such a decade. The city blamed that failure on a number of migrant buses that arrived that day, overloading the system.

This is very different than when you have a much smaller number of homegrown New Yorkers who don’t like coming in at the usual rate,” said Mr. McGuire.

Legal Aid Association, filed a lawsuit over 40 years ago leading to the right to shelter and continue to ensure compliance by the city, acknowledging that the influx of migrants has caused many problems. The city’s shelter population has grown by more than 5,000, to nearly 56,000 since August 9, up nearly 10 percent in a month. In addition to the spike in numbers, advocates say the city is struggling with staffing issues, including a lack of Spanish-speaking workers to help process the migrants. .

New Yorkers are often unaware of the city’s obligations to them. Marbeliz del Carmen Gutierrez Hernandez, 32, arrived at the Port Authority bus station with her 12-year-old son on Thursday and was met by volunteers who have been on the front lines of responding to the influx of migrants. She said she didn’t know that New York City was a sanctuary city for immigrants or that she had a right to shelter here.

She began her trip to the United States on August 1 from Necoclí, Colombia, on foot and by speedboat, and drank water with a tablet. During the trip, she was separated from her partner, and a family they were traveling with drowned, she said.

Ms Hernandez said she endured the difficult journey to achieve a better quality of life for her son.

“As a parent, you do it for your children,” Ms. Hernandez said. “If you don’t have money, how can you earn it?”

Despite the recent increase, the city’s shelter system is still under one more than 60,000 people in 2016. And, on the night the city failed to provide beds for 60 migrants, the system made beds available, according to the Legal Aid Association. (Those beds are designated for special populations, including those with mental illness, but advocates say. the city should cut the red tape to allow migrants to use them.)

City officials say more than 3,000 of the 11,000 migrants who arrived since May are no longer in the shelter system.

Supporters say the city is being stunned by the formidable obstacles it faces. “They are working very hard. Joshua Goldfein, a staff attorney with the Legal Aid Association, said. “As has happened in every new mayoral administration, people come to people who haven’t dealt with this before and they have to face their obligations. Their initial reaction was: Can’t we just get away with this? “

Shahana Hanif, a city councilwoman who chairs the Council’s Immigration Committee, said the rhetoric surrounding the right to stay is “dangerous” and the city should provide more funding to organizations like Catholic Charities, which will operate a new welcome center and hire more interpreters and provide better food for incoming migrants.

Although their legal obligations differ, other cities have also scrambled to respond to the influx of migrants. In Washington, DC, Mayor Muriel E. Bowser last week declare a public emergency and moved on to create the Office of Migration Services.

She also said the city would establish a migrant shelter system separate from the existing homeless service system, acknowledging that Washington’s shelter network and service providers are not currently built or staffed to support the specific needs of migrants .

Washington’s law requires the city to provide shelter to people who are homeless in extreme cold or heat, but unlike New York, the city does not require year-round shelter. Local advocates say some of the thousands who emigrated to Washington slept outside the city’s train station, and Washington Post reported that some had camped out in the hotel parking lot.

Massachusetts also has the right to temporary residency, but its powers only apply to families with children and pregnant women. State officials say “short-term shelter services” have been provided to migrants on Martha’s Vineyard.

Chicago has taken in about 500 migrants from Texas in the past two weeks, and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker on Wednesday said he would deploy 75 National Guard members to help connect migrants with shelter, food and medical care. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said at a news conference: “The federal government has to step up.

Chicago has put some migrants in homeless shelters but has also put some people in suburban hotels.

There is strong support for New York lawmakers’ right to shelter, and lifting protections for the homeless will be difficult. New York’s sojourn law, which dates back to the 1979 courts, is one reason the city doesn’t have the same level of street homelessness. like some cities in California and other places.

Fabien Levy, a spokesman for Mr. Adams, said the administration had set up a task force to look at ways to reassess practices around the sojourn law.

I think we should be very worried if a re-examination would mean revoking or revoking the right to stay, which really, I’m grateful the mayor can’t do.Mrs. Hanif said.

Michael Gold and Juan B. García contributed reporting.



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