NEW YORK (1010 WINS/WCBS 880) — Mayor Eric Adams is expected to announce a change in policy on Friday capping the stay of migrant families with children in city shelters to 60 days, a significant reduction from their current indefinite stay, according to a report by the Daily News.
This comes after a prior policy was introduced in July, restricting adult migrants without children to 30-day stays in shelters which aimed to prioritize migrant families with children.
Before the policy shift, migrant families with children were the only asylum seekers with no imposed time limits for shelter stays.
The decision comes as New York City grapples with how to house more than 62,000 migrants in city shelters.
The rule can take effect as soon as Friday afternoon, sources told the Daily News.
Migrant families who are unable to find housing within the 60-day timeframe will have the option to reapply for shelter placement and return to the city’s Roosevelt Hotel asylum seeker arrival center.
The Legal Aid Society and the Coalition for the Homeless expressed their concerns in a statement Friday.
“Forcing families with children, who have endured unthinkable suffering traveling to New York - trauma the Mayor reportedly saw firsthand when he visited the Darién Gap last week - to face potential expulsion from safe shelter after 60 days shows a significant lack of humanity and tarnishes our city’s long-standing reputation as a welcoming sanctuary," the statement read.
The groups further said that this move would particularly harm homeless students, leading to disruptions in their education. "Parents might find themselves forced to choose: re-enroll their children or journey across the city to their current school. This results in a challenging scenario for both the affected families and educators,” the statement continued.
The statement also highlighted contradictions between this policy and previous remarks from both the mayor's office and Gov. Kathy Hochul, who had earlier emphasized the prioritization of children with families.
Hochul backed New York City's push to temporarily halt a special legal agreement mandating the city to offer emergency housing to the homeless on Thursday.
“I don’t know how the right to shelter — dedicated to help those people, which I believe in, help families — can or should be interpreted to be an open invitation to 8 billion people who live on this planet, that if you show up in the streets of New York, that the city of New York has an obligation to provide you with a hotel room or shelter,” the governor said.
In response, Dave Giffen, the head of the Coalition for the Homeless, expressed concerns over the implications of such a move.
“Make no mistake: if the mayor and governor get their way, they will be closing the door of the shelter system to thousands of people without homes, leaving them nowhere to sleep but the streets,” Giffen said.
New York City continues to take in more than 10,000 migrants each month, according to City Hall.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.