Mayor Adams’ administration ‘aggressively’ pursuing new strategy to scrap right-to-shelter mandate

Mayor Adams’ administration is “aggressively” pursuing a new legal strategy for rolling back the city’s right-to-shelter mandate — and wants city lawmakers to ramp up public pressure on Gov. Hochul for not doing more to alleviate the worsening local migrant crisis, the Daily News has learned.

Top aides to Adams divulged the new details about City Hall’s migrant response in a private Thursday afternoon virtual briefing with members of the City Council and the state Legislature.

Lisa Zornberg, Adams’ newly-appointed chief counsel, touched on the new front in the administration’s bid to scrap the city’s right-to-shelter rule after Republican lawmakers on the call pointed out that the mayor’s original request to do so appears to have stalled in court.

“We are exploring aggressively other legal strategies to bring a semblance of common sense and relief back to this space,” Zornberg told the politicians. “So I hear you, and I’m on the job less than two weeks, and I can tell you this is my top priority.”

Asked to elaborate on what that strategy looks like, Zornberg said she’s “not at liberty” to say amid the pending court case.

“But I do want to repeat that we’re not being lazy,” she said. “We think that there needs to be legal strategies to deal with this crisis in the same way that there needs to be operational strategies, political strategies, and we’re going full steam on that front as well.”

The decades-old right-to-shelter mandate, which requires the city to provide a bed to anybody who needs one, is being targeted for suspension by Adams’ administration because the mayor says it’s impossible for his team to comply with it at a time when there are more than 59,000 migrants living in local shelters.

The case for lifting the mandate is being brought by Adams’ administration in Manhattan Supreme Court. Lawyers for Hochul’s administration, which is a party to that case, have in recent court filings lambasted the Adams administration’s handling of the migrant crisis, accusing City Hall of using state-provided resources in an inefficient way.

But in Thursday’s briefing, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, Adams’ chief adviser, said it’s Hochul who should face public criticism for not doing more to help the city tackle the crisis — and urged the lawmakers on the call to join her in haranguing the governor.

“We need our city partners to work with us to pressure the governor into understanding that this is a statewide issue,” Lewis-Martin said.

Earlier in the day, Hochul delivered a live-streamed speech from Albany, in which she called on President Biden to provide the city with more federal space for housing migrants and urged him to expedite work permits for newly-arrived migrants.

But Hochul stopped short of calling on Biden to declare a federal emergency over the migrant crisis — a key request from Adams that would open up new funding streams. The governor also did not pledge to sign an executive order that would prevent upstate counties from blocking the transfer of migrants from the city, another ask from Adams.

Lewis-Martin took particular offense about Hochul’s decision to not address those two points in her speech.

“The governor was on TV today, and she made it clear, in her mind, this is a New York City issue,” she said.

Later in the call, Lewis-Martin said of the other request: “The only way the president will consider a state of emergency is if it comes from the governor, and she’s not doing it.”

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Addressing the lawmakers on the call, Lewis-Martin urged them to travel to Albany and directly press the governor for action.

“We can’t be the ones that’s driving it because then they’re going to say, ‘Oh, it’s from the office of the mayor,’” she said.

“You all know what to do, and we need you to do it,” she continued. “If you need talking points, we can provide that … For the governor not to [ask Biden to] declare a state of emergency in New York and to state this is only New York City’s problem is wrong.”

A spokesman for Hochul’s office did not return a request for comment late Thursday.

Amid the heightened friction between their teams, Adams and Hochul still agree that the Biden administration must do more to help with the city’s crisis.

However, Bronx Councilwoman Diana Ayala, a Democrat who leads the Council’s General Welfare Committee, said on Thursday’s briefing that she’s not hopeful that Biden will do much.

“I find it very unlikely that the federal government is going to do the right thing here, considering that there’s an election year next year, and I’m just being really honest about that,” Ayala said. “Politics and immigration don’t mix well.”