Mayor Adams rips ‘hypocritical’ critics of his right-to-shelter rollback, vows legal war on upstate leaders refusing migrants

Mayor Adams — who’s under heavy scrutiny over his handling of the city’s migrant crisis — fired back in all directions Thursday, blasting critics on the left as “hypocritical” for questioning his weakening of a local shelter law, while vowing to wage legal war against upstate Republicans who are refusing to help house asylum seekers.

Late Wednesday, Adams issued an executive order suspending key components of the city’s longstanding right-to-shelter law, including a provision that bars the city from placing families with kids in congregate, dorm-style shelters. Homeless advocates and elected Democrats rapidly ripped the move as dangerous and pointed to data showing that sheltering kids in congregate settings increases the likelihood of sexual abuse.

In a Thursday morning press conference, Adams claimed many of his critics don’t have a right to lambast his right-to-shelter rollback because they have not participated in homeless outreach efforts.

“You can’t all of a sudden be so vociferous, when it is time to get people the services they need, you’re nowhere there,” he said at City Hall before adding: “So to not be there to be preventative, it’s just, I think it’s hypocritical.”

Switching gears, Adams took aim at Rockland County Executive Ed Day and Orange County Executive Steve Neuhaus, Republicans who have sought to use emergency powers and legal actions to block New York City from relocating hundreds of migrants to their jurisdictions.

Adams’ administration was supposed to start transporting some migrants to the upstate counties Wednesday, but called it off after Rockland officials secured a temporary restraining order from a judge against one of the hotels that the city had planned to house asylum seekers in.

The mayor said his administration intends to mount a full court legal press against the upstate Republicans.

“We’re going to challenge all of the legal obstacles that are attempting to be placed in our way, we’re going to challenge them,” he said.

“It would set a bad precedent,” he continued. “If someone is saying, ‘In the state of New York that you are not allowed to come here’ — that’s just a bad precedent.”

After the press conference, Adams spokesman Fabien Levy said the city’s planned migrant transports to Rockland are “on hold” as court cases play out, including one that Day’s office filed directly against the mayor’s administration.

Two buses with dozens of migrants left for Orange County early Thursday, though, Levy said. Those migrants are expected to be housed in a hotel in Newburgh, and New York City is paying for their stay.

Back on the right-to-shelter front, Adams said it was “a difficult decision” to suspend the rules, which have been in place for decades.

He told reporters it was necessary to do so because the city barely has room to house the nearly 40,000 migrants who are already in its shelter and emergency hotel systems. Most of them are from Latin America and crossed the U.S. southern border in hopes of seeking asylum after fleeing poverty and violence in their home countries.

Meantime, the pace of arrivals is only expected to accelerate Friday, when Title 42, a federal border enforcement mechanism, expires. The city could start seeing 500 migrants arrive every day, and Adams said that if his administration does not give itself the ability to house some of them — including children — in nonconventional settings, they could end up living on the streets.

“This was a hard decision, but it’s the right decision,” he said. “And no one seems to care, but I care.”

Regardless, Adams suggested congregate shelter settings aren’t that bad.

“My son went to college in a dorm — he didn’t have his own kitchen and bathroom and he still did a great job. That’s just not realistic,” Adams said, referencing shelter conditions required for families with kids under the now-suspended right-to-shelter rule.

Chris Quinn, a former City Council speaker who runs Win, the city’s largest family shelter provider, dismissed Adams’ analogy about his son and said the problem lies in the fact that children have been sexually abused in the past after the city put them in congregate shelters.

“Dorm rooms for teenagers in college are different than congregate shelters for children who are fleeing violence and sex trafficking and totalitarian regimes,” she told the Daily News. “The trauma and the PTSD involved in a congregate settings is very different than a college experience.”

Instead of rolling back protections, Quinn said there are mechanisms Adams can use to free up space in shelters for migrants, including suspending a rule that requires New Yorkers to live in a shelter for 90 days before they can apply for a low-income housing voucher.

“The mayor has tools in his toolbox that he is not utilizing,” she said.