Migrants who want to stay in city shelters past their allotted time will be subject to strict new guidelines starting next week.
Some 200 single asylum seekers whose 30-day shelter stays expired this week are expected to be among the first to reapply for housing — and will now need to provide “extenuating circumstances” for why they should be granted a bed for another 30 days, city officials said Friday.
“While these changes will require some adaptation, we are confident that they will help migrants progress to the next stage of their journeys, reduce the significant strain on our shelter system and enable us to continue providing essential services to all New Yorkers,” Mayor Eric Adams’ Chief of Staff, Camille Joseph Varlack, told reporters Friday morning.
The Adams administration argues the newly-granted powers, giving the city emergency exemption from the Big Apple’s “right to shelter” mandate, will motivate migrants to move on from the overwhelmed shelter system.
“Our shelter system was never intended to be a permanent landing place for people,” Varlack said, adding, “And our goal in a universe of limited resources is to prioritize our resources to support the most vulnerable families with children and the newest new arrivals.”
The new rules are part of a deal struck in March following a drawn-out legal fight over the decades-old “right to shelter” mandate, which forces the city to provide a bed to anyone who wants one.
The settlement still leaves the city on the hook for providing shelter to asylum seekers as they arrive — but also gives officials the ability to review applications for extended stays on a “case-by-case basis” if they see fit.
Single migrants are given 30 days in the shelters while younger adult migrants, between the ages of 18 and 23, will have 60 days under the deal.
If they reapply for shelter once their stay limit has expired, they will need to prove they meet a certain set of circumstances — such as plans to relocate within 30 days, recovery from a medical procedure or having one scheduled in the next month or showing they have made “significant efforts” to find new housing — in order to be automatically approved.
The Adams administration has held up the stay limits as a key tool to help alleviate the strain on the city’s shelter system and budget.
The limits were credited with nearly half of migrant families moving out of the city’s shelter system in March.
Since the start of the crisis nearly 200,000 asylum seekers have come through the Big Apple with just over 65,000 still in the city’s patchwork of emergency shelters.
