After attempting to roll back the so-called right to shelter rule following a massive influx of migrants, New York City has reached an agreement with the Legal Aid Society that will enable the city to limit stays in shelters for some adult migrants for 30 days without offering them a chance to reapply.
A longstanding debate over the city's right to shelter rule entered court-supervised negotiations last year, with talks lasting 10 months between the city, state and Legal Aid Society, which represents people living in shelters. The new settlement relieves the city of certain obligations to shelter childless adult migrants during the existing state of migrants emergency.
“This settlement safeguards the right to shelter in the consent decree, ensuring single adults’ – both long-time New Yorkers and new arrivals – access to shelter, basic necessities and case management to transition from shelter to housing in the community," said Adriene Holder, chief attorney of the Civil Practice at The Legal Aid Society.
According to Legal Aid and the Adams administration, not all adult migrants seeking to stay in city-run shelters past 30 days will be given the ability to reapply -- as current policy has allowed for months -- except under a pair of narrow circumstances.
Those two conditions are said to allow a shelter extension if a migrant is disabled, or has an "extenuating circumstance." The parameters of the latter rule weren't made immediately clear — and the two sides appeared to have difference interpretations from both sides.
"What has that person done to try to move out? Have they shown that they are making genuine efforts? If they have done that, then that's an extenuating circumstance," said Josh Goldfein of the Legal Aid Society.
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But city officials put an emphasis on people who are close to moving out.
The agreement also provides more time for young adult migrants navigating the city's shelter system. Young adults, under the age of 23, will get 60 days to stay in city-run shelters before reaching a move-out deadline.
Judge Gerald Lebovitz said the settlement will ease the burden for a city shelter system stretched to its breaking point.
"Now we have a workable path forward...so that everyone has a bed in safe conditions instead of sitting in chairs or dying in the cold," said Lebovitz, who supervised the negotiations over the past five months. He called the settlement "good for the city and the people of New York."
The city is expected to continue offering migrants bus and plane tickets to enable them to travel to other cities in an effort to reduce the city's migrant burden.
The settlement "also requires the City to immediately eliminate the use of waiting rooms as shelters where new arrivals have been sleeping on chairs and floors while they wait for shelter placement,” Holder said.
The settlement terms will only apply for the duration of the ongoing migrant crisis -- the underlying right to shelter consent decree has not been altered, Legal Aid said. The agreement only applies to single adults seeking shelter in the city, not families with children.
“New York City has led the nation in responding to a national humanitarian crisis, providing shelter and care to approximately183,000 new arrivals since the spring of 2022, but we have been clear, from day one, that the ‘Right to Shelter’ was never intended to apply to a population larger than most U.S. cities descending on the five boroughs in less than two years,” Mayor Eric Adams said in a statement.
Since last May, the Adams administration has sought to roll back the right to shelter rules following the arrival of tens of thousands migrants. Most have arrived without a certain path to jobs, forcing the city to create more than 200 emergency shelters and provide numerous other government services, with a cost the administration estimates of $12 billion over the next few years.
The right to shelter has been in place for more than four decades in New York, after a court in 1981 required the city to provide temporary housing for every homeless person who asks for it. Other big U.S. cities don't have such a rule.
