Single adult migrants will only be able to stay in New York City shelters for 30 consecutive days under a new policy Mayor Adams announced Friday amid an ongoing influx of asylum seekers.
The policy, which takes effect immediately, means all single adult migrants who apply for shelter will receive notices upon being accepted for placement informing them they have 30 days before they must vacate their beds. According to Adams’ office, migrants who get 30-day notices will also receive “intensified casework services” aimed at helping them find their own housing, in New York or elsewhere.
If they can’t find new housing within the 30-day window, migrants can come back to the Adams administration’s asylum seeker arrival center at the Roosevelt Hotel and reapply for another month-long shelter stay, a City Hall official said. Single adult migrants who are already in the city’s care will start receiving 30-day notices, too, the official said.
The new policy is an escalation of a practice the administration enacted this summer that limited consecutive shelter stays for single adult migrants to 60 days.
The start of the new policy comes as the first batch of 60-day notices issued by the city are set to come due Saturday. Advocates have raised concern that the shelter stay limits are going to result in migrants sleeping in the streets, and the Roosevelt Hotel asylum seeker arrival center could see droves of asylum seekers show up Saturday to reapply for shelter.
“The 30-day policy is just as cruel and inhumane as the 60-day rule,” said Manhattan Councilwoman Diana Ayala, a Democrat who chairs the Council’s General Welfare Committee. “This poor policy decision may lead to thousands finding themselves on the street with no place to go.”
The new 30-day restriction comes as more than 60,000 migrants, most of them from Latin America, remain in city-run shelter and emergency housing facilities. Hundreds more migrants continue to pour into the city every week, and Adams said in a statement that he has to enact policies like the 30-day shelter stay limit in order to free up shelter space for new arrivals.
“With more than 60,000 asylum seekers still in our care and without additional help, we will be forced to continue making difficult decisions,” said Adams, who has for months pleaded for more help from the federal government and Gov. Hochul’s administration.
Migrant families with children are not impacted by the restrictions and can stay in city shelters as long as they need. However, city government sources familiar with the matter told the Daily News earlier this week that the Adams administration is considering placing limits on how long asylum-seeking families with kids can stay in shelters, too.
According to Adams’ office, city workers have handed out about 13,000 60-day notices since that policy took effect about two months ago.
On Wednesday, the Biden administration announced the U.S. is extending a form of protected status for Venezuelan migrants that’ll put them on a fast track to work permits — a move Adams had requested from the feds for months as a means of allowing new arrivals to contribute to the local economy.
Thousands of Venezuelan migrants in the city are expected to be able to benefit from the expedited work permits.
But Rendy Desamours, a spokesman for City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, predicted the new 30-day shelter stay limit could prove problematic for migrants seeking work authorization because change of addresses would almost certainly slow the flow of their application paperwork.
“[The policy] could undermine the ability for asylum seekers to receive work authorization and legal status, as they are moved away from a reliable mailing address to receive paperwork,” Desamours said. “It’s troubling that the administration is now enacting an even shorter timeline before assessing the impact of its existing 60-day timeline.”
Culled from the New York Daily News. Click here for the full story Mayor Adams limits NYC shelter stays to 30 consecutive days for adult migrants (nydailynews.com)
