New York City Mayor Eric Adams asked a judge on Tuesday to let the city suspend its long-standing “right to shelter” obligation, saying officials are no longer able to house every homeless person because of the arrival of tens of thousands of international migrants.
The right to shelter has been in place for more than four decades in New York, after a court in 1981 required the city to provide temporary housing for every homeless person who asks for it. Other big U.S. cities don’t have such a rule.
But with the arrival of 70,000 asylum seekers since last spring, many of whom crossed into the U.S. from Mexico, the city has been challenged to find room for everyone in need of a temporary roof and bed.
“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,” Mayor Adams said in a statement.
“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,” said the mayor, a Democrat.
Adams said he was not seeking to permanently end the right to shelter but was seeking “clarity from the court.”
In a statement, a Rockland County spokesperson said it is “against local zoning laws for hotels and motels to operate as a shelter,” adding that the county “always puts people before profit” and that their actions were “taken to protect residents from the irreparable harm this would cause.”
In the initial months of the crisis, Adams heralded the “right to shelter” mandate as an emblem of his city’s empathy toward asylum seekers. Many of the first arrivals were bused to New York by the governors of Republican-led border states including Texas and Arizona who were trying to bring attention to the border crisis. The governors also targeted Washington, D.C., another city with a Democratic mayor.
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