Mayor Adams is now stating New York City’s “right to shelter” policy is not applicable to the tens of thousands of migrants who have flooded into the city. His comments on the WABC radio program "Sid & Friends" came as New York City struggles to find housing for an inundation of asylum seekers. The sanctuary city has begged for monetary relief as the mayor estimates the cost of shelter for to be in the 2 billion dollar range.
He told the radio host, Sid Rosenberg, “The court ruled that this is a sanctuary city. We have a moral and legal obligation to fulfill that. We don’t believe asylum seekers fall into the whole ‘right to shelter’ conversation." The mayor added, “There’s no more room at the inn, and the reason there’s no more room at the inn is because the federal government is not doing their job.”
New York City’s “right to shelter” law is one of the most powerful sanctuary city laws in the country. It mandates the government to provide shelter for anyone who is homeless on any given night. The law was drafted in 1979 following a Legal Aid Society lawsuit against the city that involved six homeless men. When they won the suit, the "right to shelter" became law.
The Legal Aid Society and Coalition for the Homeless stated in a press release, “This is not a responsibility that Mayor Adams can decide to shirk, and he knows better."
In response, Fabien Levy, Mayoral press secretary said in an email to the New York Post, “Legal Aid’s suggestion that the city is flouting it’s [sic] legal obligations couldn’t be further from the truth. But, as we have made clear for months, and as Legal Aid even said today, the federal government has an obligation here, as does the state.”
Mayor Adams has requested monetary relief from both the state and federal government, but has been refunded only $10 million of the $366 million spent on the current migrant crisis. He has called upon the government to implement a decompression strategy for immigration and to close the southern border.
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