Adams Asks Court to Suspend NYC’s ‘Right to Shelter’ Rule Amid Migrant Crisis

Breitbart News reports that New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) is seeking court approval to suspend the city’s “right to shelter” rule as the city struggles to provide housing and resources to more than 40,000 migrants with limited federal aid.

New York City’s “right to shelter” rule is a decades-old regulation that requires the city to provide a bed to individuals who meet specific circumstances.

Adams is seeking to waive the rule when “the City of New York acting through the New York City Department of Homeless Services (“DHS”) lacks the resources and capacity to establish and maintain sufficient shelter sites, staffing, and security to provide safe and appropriate shelter,” according to New York City Law Department’s Jonathan Pines.

Pines continued:

This ongoing flood of asylum-seekers arriving in New York City from the southern border represents a crisis of national, indeed international dimension; yet, the challenges and fiscal burden of this national crisis have fallen almost exclusively upon the City.

These unprecedented demands on the City’s shelter resources confront the City Defendant with challenges never contemplated, foreseeable, or indeed even remotely imagined by any signatory to the Callahan Judgment.

Adams said in a statement:

Given that we’re unable to provide care for an unlimited number of people and are already overextended, it is in the best interest of everyone, including those seeking to come to the United States, to be upfront that New York City cannot single-handedly provide care to everyone crossing our border. Being dishonest about this will only result in our system collapsing, and we need our government partners to know the truth and do their share.

More than 73,000 migrants have arrived in New York City since last spring, according to city officials. The city is providing housing to more than 44,000 migrants in upwards of 150 “emergency” shelters or hotels, the New York Post reported.

New York City Office of Management and Budget Director Jacques Jiha on Tuesday warned the city council that the city will soon be “caring for more asylum seekers on a nightly basis than we had people in our entire DHS shelter system last year.”