New York City’s “right to shelter” policy does not apply to the tens of thousands of asylum seekers who have sought sanctuary in the boroughs since last spring, Mayor Eric Adams said this week.
The Democrat’s comments on WABC radio’s “Sid & Friends in the Morning” came as officials struggled to accommodate the inundation of migrants in the sanctuary city and implored federal officials to pick up the tab, which Adams has estimated at up to $2 billion.
“The court ruled that this is a sanctuary city,” he told host Sid Rosenberg. “We have a moral and legal obligation to fulfill that. We don’t believe asylum seekers fall into the whole ‘right to shelter’ conversation.
“There’s no more room at the inn, and the reason there’s no more room at the inn is because the federal government is not doing their job,” said Adams, who visited El Paso, Texas, earlier this month to get a firsthand look at the national crisis that is spilling into the city.
New York City has seen over 41,600 asylum seekers arrive in the boroughs since the spring and has opened 77 emergency shelters and four Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Centers, with two more on the way in Midtown Manhattan and at Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, officials said this week.
The city’s “right to shelter” law is one of the strongest sanctuary city laws in the country, requiring the government to make a roof available to anyone without a home on any given night.
It was put in place on the heels of a 1979 Legal Aid Society lawsuit against the city in defense of six homeless men. The group won the case, enshrining “right to shelter” in law.
The Legal Aid Society and Coalition for the Homeless panned the mayor for his comments.
“This is not a responsibility that Mayor Adams can decide to shirk, and he knows better,” the organizations said in a press release.
Mayoral press secretary Fabien Levy hit back at the organization.
“Legal Aid’s suggestion that the city is flouting it’s [sic] legal obligations couldn’t be further from the truth,” he told The Post in an email. “But, as we have made clear for months, and as Legal Aid even said today, the federal government has an obligation here, as does the state.”
Adams has asked both the state and federal government for support, but has only been refunded $10 million of the $366 million spent so far on the migrant crisis as of last month, Budget Director Jacques Jiha said this week.
Hizzoner had penned a Washington Post op-ed earlier this month calling on President Biden to close off the southern border until migrants’ asylum applications can be processed and outlining a “decompression” strategy to ease the crisis and settle migrants.
Millions of migrants were expelled from the border under the Title 42 emergency measure during the pandemic.
Its scheduled expiration last month had led to a surge in people seeking refuge from unstable governments in the Caribbean and Central and South America overwhelming the border.
The measure is still in effect and the Supreme Court is set to hear arguments against letting it expire in February.
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January 27, 2023 at 12:06AM
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Eric Adams, in shift, says NYC's 'right to shelter' policy doesn't apply to migrants - New York Post
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