Mayor Adams slammed for seeking change to NYC right to shelter law

Mayor Adams weathered a torrent of criticism Wednesday for his administration’s legal push to diminish the city’s right to shelter law, with detractors calling the move misguided and demanding the mayor reconsider.

A day earlier, Adams announced the city is seeking to include an exception to the decades-old legal agreement that would allow it to forego providing shelter in instances when the city “lacks the resources and capacity to maintain sufficient shelter sites, staffing and security.”

The mayor was careful to note that he isn’t “seeking to end the right to shelter,” but pointed to the more than 65,000 migrants who’ve streamed into the city last year as proof that the city “cannot single-handedly provide care to everyone crossing our border.”

His words — and the city’s legal entreaty to a state Supreme Court judge to reexamine the 1981 consent decree that enshrined the right to shelter into law — have drawn a swift and harsh rebuke.

“The administration’s troubling application, which appears to pursue an elimination of more than 40 years of legal protections for our city’s most vulnerable, leaves in question whether New Yorkers will be left to sleep on our streets, parks, roadway shoulder exits and subways,” Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and Deputy Speaker Diana Ayala said in a statement.

“It’s beyond disturbing that so much effort is being spent on rolling back protections for all New Yorkers, instead of implementing immediate and long-term solutions that can help us avoid and move out of shelters.”

Included in those efforts is the Council’s push to eliminate a rule that people in living in homeless shelters must wait three months before being able to apply for city-subsidized housing vouchers — a proposal the mayor has panned because of how much it will cost.

“Instead of solely focusing efforts on emergency shelter space and taking away essential safety protections, this administration should pursue readily available solutions that can reduce homelessness, including adequate investments in eviction prevention, housing vouchers, agency staffing, and affordable housing development that are currently missing from its proposed budget,” they added.

Since last spring, when asylum seekers began surging into the city, the mayor’s team and advocates have sparred over the city’s ability to abide by the right to shelter law.

The Legal Aid Society and the Coalition for the Homeless, which both monitor the city’s adherence to the law, threatened to sue the administration when the Adams was poised to house migrants in tents at a Bronx parking lot. That came days after the city appeared to run afoul of right-to-shelter rules when it didn’t provide housing for people seeking shelter within the prescribed time frame.

The right-to-shelter law came into being not through legislation, but through what’s known as the Callahan consent decree, which stemmed from a court case resolved in 1981.

For progressives like city Comptroller Brad Lander, the law is viewed as a cornerstone of the city’s social safety.

Lander criticized the mayor’s attempt to diminish the law as an abdication, but also laid part of the blame for the migrant crisis at the feet of President Biden’s administration, which the mayor has also criticized.

“The Adams administration’s attempt to abdicate its responsibility to uphold this legal obligation undermines the foundation of the social safety net in this city,” he said. “Providing shelter to arriving asylum seekers is a massive undertaking that stretches the management capacity of this administration and a financial strain that the federal government needs to cover.”

Lander also questioned the city’s legal approach and suggested that instead of trying to narrow the law to slow the flow of migrants into the city, the mayor’s legal team should ask the court to broaden it to further clarify the responsibilities of other cities in the state.

“Rather than seeking to circumvent the state constitutional requirement to provide safe and dignified shelter, the mayor should have gone to court to clarify that it applies to all municipalities in New York State,” he said.

But not everyone’s attacking the Democratic mayor’s decision. Republicans in particular have praised him.

Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella said “the city does not have the resources to manage the influx of tens of thousands of migrants indefinitely” and that he strongly supported mayor’s plea to suspend the law.

“I give the Mayor a great deal of credit,” Fossella, a Republican added. “The fault all lies squarely with our federal government, which has allowed the crisis at the border to spin out of control. It is unconscionable for the federal government to leave this matter for state and local governments to handle.”

Councilman Joe Borelli, also a Republican from Staten Island, took a similar view.

“Not one soul on the left can answer what the end game is for these people,” Borelli said of the migrants. “No one knows what triggers them to get out of our system.”