NEW YORK (1010 WINS) — Mayor Eric Adams made comments on a radio morning show this week suggesting asylum seekers don’t fall under the city’s Right to Shelter law that mandates the city provide a bed to anyone seeking one.
“We don’t believe asylum seekers fall into the whole ‘Right to Shelter’ conversation,” he said.
More than 41,000 asylum seekers have arrived in New York City since the spring. The Adams administration has attributed a strain on the city’s shelter system to the increase in immigration and called for federal and state support in accommodating the new arrivals.
The administration has opened refugee camps for asylum seekers and housed some of the migrants in hotels. The camps also provide food, education, health care, legal support and other services.
A 1979 Legal Aid Society lawsuit enshrined the Right to Shelter and the Coalition for the Homeless is responsible for monitoring the city’s compliance.
The LAS and CftH issued a joint response condemning Adams’ comments.
“Anyone in need of shelter, including asylum seekers, is entitled to such, as prescribed by multiple long-standing court orders and local law. This is not a responsibility that Mayor Adams can decide to shirk, and he knows better,” wrote the organizations. “Flouting the law would accomplish nothing and such a move would only land this Administration in front of a judge for contempt. The Mayor must clarify his remarks from this morning immediately.”
Fabien Levy, a spokesperson for the mayor, said the administration is meeting its legal and ethical obligations to the asylum seekers.
“Legal Aid’s suggestion that the city is flouting its legal obligations couldn’t be further from the truth,” he told 1010 WINS. “Since the beginning of this humanitarian crisis last spring, Mayor Adams and this administration have taken extraordinary measures to provide shelter and support to the approximately 42,000 asylum seekers who have sought help from the city. We have already opened 79 hotels and four humanitarian relief centers, and another is scheduled to open shortly.”
Levy also called for further federal and state aid to shelter and support asylum seekers.
“If this humanitarian crisis was simply a Right to Shelter issue, then only New York City would bear the responsibility for providing for these individuals. 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,” he said. “This is a humanitarian crisis that requires all involved to provide assistance.”
Levy declined to further clarify whether the administration interprets the Right to Shelter law as excluding asylum seekers.
This isn’t the first time Adams has spoken out against the city’s long-standing Right to Shelter law.
About 60 men were denied beds at a homeless shelter in potential violation of the law in mid-September. The city provided them beds the next day, according to the mayor’s office.
Two days after the incident, Adams said the city should “reassess” the Right to Shelter law.
In July, the mayor's office admitted a violation in which it failed to find beds for at least five families.
With each individual who is denied shelter counting as a violation of the law, the Adams administration may be looking at over 70 violations.
During the entirety of former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s eight years in office, the Right to Shelter law was violated only once.
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