A legal agreement scales back the longstanding requirement that the city provide shelter to homeless people who seek it. Families will not be affected.
By Luis Ferre-Sadurni
Mar 15, 2024
New York's longstanding legal obligation to provide shelter to homeless people will be scaled back significantly under a settlement agreement announced on Friday that was reached amid the city's continuing struggle to house thousands of migrants.
To ease the burden on the city's shelter system, adult migrants will be allowed to stay in shelters for only 30 days under the agreement, city officials said. Some would be allowed to stay longer if they met certain conditions, including having a medical disability or an "extenuating circumstance," officials said.
The changes to the so-called right-to-shelter requirement are a major shift in a policy that had set New York apart from all other big U.S. cities. In no other city must officials guarantee a bed to any homeless person who seeks one, something city officials have alternately taken pride in and fought against for decades .
The agreement, stemming from a state court case being overseen by Justice Gerald Lebovits, resolved months of negotiations between city officials and the plaintiffs in the original consent decree that established the right-to-shelter requirement, who are being represented by the Legal Aid Society.
The new rules, which will take effect immediately, are meant to apply temporarily to how the city responds to the migrant crisis, which has led more than 180,000 migrants to pass through the city's shelter system since the spring of 2022.
Under the agreement, adult migrants ages 18 to 23 would have up to 60 days in the shelter system before having to move out. Migrant families with children would not be affected, and can still stay in shelters for up to 60 days, with the option of reapplying, city officials said.
Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat who has spent almost a year trying to weaken the right-to-shelter requirement, hailed the settlement as a major victory.
His administration has increased the number of shelters, converted hotels to shelters and opened tent dormitories to house the 65,000 migrants still under the city's care, 22 percent of whom are single adults or adult families, according to city officials. The mayor has warned that the financial burden created by the migrants is straining the city's budget, will cost $10 billion over three years and threatens "to destroy" the city .
Mr. Adams has said he does not want to end the right to shelter permanently, but to modify it significantly to relieve the city of having to house so many migrants. His main argument is that the 1981 consent decree that established the requirement never anticipated an influx of migrants arriving with nowhere to live.
On Friday, Judge Lebovits echoed that argument in describing the five months of negotiations that led to the settlement.
"Over the last year or so, the humanitarian crisis stemming from large numbers of migrants arriving in New York City stretched to the breaking point the city's ability to comply with existing requirements" of the consent decree, the judge said. "Our goal has always been to find a way for all parties to win. To think creatively to find a resolution that would advance each party's interests ."
The legal wrangling over the requirement began in May, when the mayor sought legal permission to alter the consent decree's term so that homeless adults and adult families could be denied shelter if the city lacked sufficient resources and space to provide it.
In October, as migrants continued to strain the shelter system, the administration went further, asking a judge to allow it to suspend its legal obligation to provide shelter to single adults. Officials argued that the city should be able to temporarily lift the requirement during an emergency or when faced with an influx of people seeking shelter.
"We have been clear, from day one, that the 'right to shelter' was never intended to apply to a population larger than most U.S. cities descending on the five boroughs in less than two years," Mr. Adams said in a statement on Friday.
"Today's stipulation acknowledges that reality and grants us additional flexibility during times of crisis, like the national humanitarian crisis we are currently experiencing," he added.
Lawyers for the Legal Aid Society emphasized that the underlying consent decree guaranteeing shelter to homeless people remained intact. They also noted that the city would have to extend shelter stays for migrant adults beyond the 30- and 60-day limits on a case-by-case basis if, for example, they showed they were trying diligently to find a place to stay outside the system.
" The city will consider each of those requests individually based on the totality of that person's circumstances, and make a determination of how much time they might need," Joshua Goldfein, a staff attorney at Legal Aid, said in court.
The right-to-shelter requirement arose from a class-action lawsuit filed in 1979 on behalf of men who were homeless in New York that argued the men had a constitutional right to shelter.
The main plaintiff in the case, known as Callahan v. Carey , was Robert Callahan, who was living on the Manhattan streets. It was brought by Robert Hayes, a lawyer who was a founder of the Coalition for the Homeless, which was appointed as the monitor of shelters for homeless adults under the decree.
To settle the case, the city entered into the consent decree, which obligated it to "provide shelter and board to each homeless man." Over time, the decree has been the subject of competing interpretations and complex litigation ; protections to cover homeless women and families were also extended through subsequent court decisions.
In an effort to work around the consent decree, Mr. Adams had already adopted a series of rules to manage the strain that migrants have placed on the shelter system.
Last May, he issued an executive order that lifted rules requiring families to be placed in private rooms with bathrooms and kitchens, rather than group settings. The city also suspended rules setting a nightly deadline for assigning newly arriving families to shelters.
The city had also imposed limits on how long migrants could stay in many shelters. Single adults, for instance, were allowed to stay up to 30 days, but could reapply for a bed again after leaving. In addition to a medical disability of some kind, adult migrants with a court hearing scheduled within 30 days and those moving into new housing soon may qualify for extended stays under the new rules.
Under the settlement, the city must provide the plaintiffs with weekly reports on the number of migrants who are seeking and receiving extensions.
Many single adults who have reapplied for beds have had to wait days to get one under the existing rules. Some have slept outside in the cold while waiting.
Camille Baker contributed reporting.
This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/15/nyregion/nyc-right-to-shelter-homeless-migrants.html
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