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NYC Council to probe Adams’ 60-day stay limit for some shelter residents
By
Arya Sundaram
Published Aug 10, 2023
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By
Arya Sundaram
Published Aug 10, 2023
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City administration officials on Thursday can expect a grilling on Mayor Eric Adams’ hotly contested plan to slow growth of the city’s shelter population by limiting stays for single, adult migrants to 60 days.
City councilmembers have complained they have been kept out of the loop on the initiative, the subject of a Council Committees on Immigration and General Welfare oversight hearing, at 1 p.m. in City Hall.
Councilmember Shahana Hanif, Immigration Committee chair, said the only details she’s heard have come from media coverage, and piecemeal conversations with city officials while touring the city’s temporary respite centers for migrants.
“It’s been a very opaque process,” Hanif said. “On one hand, even if they don’t tell us under oath, the public is also witnessing the opaqueness and the lack of transparency that the administration has had around this conversation.”
She added: “We deserve transparency from our bureaucracy.”
Home for new arrivals
Over 57,300 new migrants and counting are now living in city shelters.
Adams said on Wednesday the number is expected to rise to over 100,000 by the end of June 2025.
Under the mayor's plan, single, adult migrants will be offered the chance to reapply for housing after the 60-day limit. But questions remain about how the new arrivals will be notified, what agency – or agencies – are in charge of the rollout, and how new migrants will fare once removed.
“I want to know: Where do you think these folks are going to go?” said Councilmember Gale Brewer, chair of the Oversight Committee, who has been monitoring the placement and conditions in migrant shelters.
City officials have already begun alerting migrants in the shelter system of the new policy.
I want to know: Where do you think these folks are going to go?
Councilmember Gale Brewer, chair of the Oversight Committee
One 60-day notice, with a July date and written in Spanish, suggests the newcomers consider options beyond New York City.
The notice, which was obtained by Gothamist, states that the city would provide assistance traveling to other locations. It asks recipients to “consider that it’s also possible” during the 60-day period that the city will need to move them to one or multiple other sites.
But starting on Sept. 22, the letter continues, “you can no longer stay in this location.”
It adds: “If you can’t make other arrangements…you can return to the arrival center located in the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan and request another housing assistance option or placement in a hotel in upstate New York.”
An 'unfair' burden
Shelter population growth over the last month was more than double the city’s projections, according to a Mayor's Office of Management and Budget report. On average, 98 new asylum-seeker households entered the system daily over the past month, up from the estimate of 40 households per day, based on prior months’ data.
While the 60-day limit likely won’t entirely reverse the breakneck pace, it’s part of the administration’s larger plan to curb the growth by 20%. That would still leave the city with another 55 households entering the shelter system daily, according to OMB’s forecasts, further boosting costs.
The council hearing comes a day after Adams announced the latest projected bill for housing and caring for newly arrived migrants — more than $12 billion by the end of June 2025. The soaring costs will require the city to find another $7 billion to foot the bill, on top of what’s already been allocated, the mayor said.
“We’re talking about $12 billion in addition to what we already need to run this city,” Adams said. “And it's just unfair for New Yorkers to carry that burden.”
Adams has repeatedly said the city is out of shelter space. Last week, images of hundreds of migrants sleeping outside the city’s main intake center in Midtown made national headlines, before the city relocated the migrants
Meanwhile, the city has opened over 200 emergency shelters — with increasingly poor conditions — to accommodate new migrants who now comprise the majority of the city’s shelter population.
Tagged
new york city
Mayor Eric Adams
Race And Justice Unit
Asylum Seekers
Arya Sundaram
Arya is a reporter covering race and justice. Got a tip? Email: [email protected] or reach Arya on Signal at 512-650-8767.
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