Migrants To Street Sleep In NYC Bid To Nix Right-To-Shelter: Critics

NEW YORK CITY — Shameful. Abhorrent. A slippery slope. Undermining the moral fiber of New York City.

Those are the words advocates used to described Mayor Eric Adams' bid to suspend the city's landmark right-to-shelter amid the asylum seeker crisis.

City officials Tuesday asked a judge to modify the court decree that effectively guarantees a place to sleep for people without homes. They asked to lift the requirement for adult men because the thousands of migrants in the city have pushed shelters beyond capacity.

But advocates quickly denounced the request in the harshest terms, arguing it paved the way toward ending the city's right-to-shelter altogether and putting migrants and homeless alike on the streets.

"This is really shameful," said Josh Goldfein, staff attorney with the Homeless Rights Project at The Legal Aid Society.

"What is the alternative if we do not have a right to shelter? If we are turning people away from the shelter system, the people are now living in the streets, in the subways, in the parks. Is that the outcome that they want?"

The right-to-shelter — which was established 42 years ago under a decree in the case Callahan v. Carey — isn't just a legal requirement, argued Christine Quinn, president and CEO of Win, the city's largest provider of shelters for women and children.

Refusing to turn away from people in need is "who we are as New Yorkers," she said.

"Instead of cold indifference, we have offered a warm, safe space to spend the night, supportive services, and a path to permanent housing," she said in a statement. "Subverting the right to shelter will threaten not just our efforts to break the cycle of homelessness and force New Yorkers into unsafe conditions, but will undermine the moral fiber of our city."

Quinn argued the city's request, though it only applies to adults, is the start of "slippery slope" that will lead to women and children in harm's way.

The mayor, for his part, contended that the right-to-shelter decree was entered four decades ago when the city's shelter population stood at a fraction of its current size.

The status quo can't continue with upward of 10,000 asylum seekers arriving in the city every month, Adams said.

"To be very clear, the city is not seeking to terminate Callahan; we are simply asking for the city’s obligations to be aligned with those of the rest of the state during states of emergency," he said in a statement.

But Goldfein, the Legal Aid attorney, said protections in other parts of New York state without the right-to-shelter have failed homeless people, who are routinely turned away onto the streets.

He said scenes of migrants on the streets in New York City will play into the hands of Republican politicians such as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who has been shipping asylum seekers to the city in order to raise — or score — political points over conditions at the U.S.-Mexico border.

"If that would play out in New York, I think they would take that as a victory," Goldfein said.