New York City Mayor Eric Adams said the city was committed to providing shelter to asylum seekers and other migrants rushing into the city in recent months, which is required under legal settlements from the 1980s.
“We are required to right to shelter,” Adams said during a Thursday briefing announcing the opening of a new navigation center to support asylum seekers.
Adams had been criticized by legal aid and other groups for saying he wanted to “reassess” the city’s shelter practices, which are enshrined in city law that stems from two court cases in the 1980s that established the right to provide shelter for anyone seeking it. Advocates also have documented instances when the city failed to fulfill its shelter obligations, including earlier this week when the Legal Aid Society said 60 men were denied shelter beds.c
“We are not reassessing the right to shelter, we are reassessing the city’s practices that developed around them,” said Adams’s Chief Counsel Brendan McGuire.
More than 11,000 migrants have arrived in New York City since May, as part of a push by Texas Governor Greg Abbott to bus migrants to New York City, Washington, D.C., Chicago and other “sanctuary” cities in a bid to pressure the Biden administration on immigration. There are more than 8,000 migrants who remain in the shelter system, Adams said. The city has opened 23 additional emergency shelters and is now welcoming between four and six migrant buses a day, officials said.