While New Yorkers were advised to stay indoors and avoid leaving their homes amid Friday's brutal downpour, migrants at a Brooklyn shelter were abruptly ejected, with some being forced to saunter across Bushwick with all of their worldly possessions.
A new city ordinance aimed at limiting the amount of time migrants without children can spend in shelters required the men to depart the Jefferson Street refuge, a converted commercial facility.
The Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown, the city's primary reception site for incoming migrants, has received instructions for migrants who don't have a place to remain within 60 days to return and look for a cot in another facility. New refugees and those who acquire another shelter bed now only have 30 days to be there.
Since the new policy went into effect last Saturday, some hundred men have left shelters, according to THE CITY, but even as a storm that Governor Kathy Hohcul described as "a life-threatening rainfall event" descended over the five boroughs, the new eviction policy persisted for a portion of the morning.
They Told Me To Get Up And Get Out
Argenes Cedeo, a 19-year-old Ecuadorian, was also making his way to the M train while walking in the rain. "They reached out and told me I had to get up and immediately get out of this place," he added. He claimed that although his 60-day notice was due to expire on Saturday, the employees at the shelter had instructed him to go a day earlier.
Cedeo claimed that he was instructed to leave on Friday, but city officials denied this.
Heavy Rainfall Disturbed The Subway Operations
Before the mayor issued his tardy state of emergency Friday morning, local City Councilmember Jennifer Gutiérrez pleaded with the Adams administration to postpone the continuing evictions at the Jefferson Street property.
Even though the L train had been suspended for the majority of the morning, a group of guys had already departed to wait for the worst of the storm to pass beneath the shelter of the Jefferson Street L train stop by that point. Others started walking across Bushwick to the M train, which was about a mile away, so they could get to the Roosevelt Hotel and look for another place to stay.
Comments / 611