New York City may soon see some relief from a decades-old rule promising housing to anyone who asks for it — with all sides in an ongoing legal battle over the “right to shelter” mandate agreeing Thursday to tone down the rhetoric as they try to reach to a compromise.
A Manhattan judge overseeing the case disclosed that the city, state and Legal Aid Society will enter mediation – which could lead to an easing back of the mandate as the Adams administration struggles to house the tens of thousands of migrants that have flooded into the five boroughs in recent months.
“The parties have agreed that for now, there should not be a war of legal papers,” Judge Gerald Lebovitz said following a more than hour-and-a-half closed-door hearing in Manhattan Supreme Court.
“For now, the solution is to try to settle the matter, if possible.”
Lawyers for all parties will huddle in the judge’s chambers several times over the next week while the legal ceasefire is in effect, according to Lebovitz.
The latest behind-closed-door proceeding was the first hearing in the case since Gov. Kathy Hochul formally sided with Mayor Eric Adams in his attempt to roll back the “right to shelter” rule — which has been in place since 1981 — to help deal with the migrant crisis that has seen more 130,000 asylum seekers come through the city.
How much relief the city could see, if any, from housing the more than 65,000 migrants in its care remained unclear.
Legal Aid attorney Joshua Goldfein said he was “optimistic” that all sides could settle the case behind closed doors rather than challenge whether the state constitution even allows the right-to-shelter roll back that Adams is pushing.
“The whole point of this is to put aside the legal skirmishing and see if we can accomplish this,” Goldfein told reporters.
“Nobody wants to see people in the streets of New York exposed to the elements and at serious risk of injury and death,” Goldfein added.
Adams’s administration has already tried to ease the pressure on the overwhelmed city shelter system by urging migrants to apply for work permits – and with a controversial policy of forcing migrant families with children staying in shelters to reapply for housing every 60 days.
Legal Aid has staunchly spoken out against the latter move, but it appears to have shown some intended success with fewer than 50% of asylum seekers booted from housing returning reapply to enter the shelter system so far.
Council Speaker Adrienne Adams (D-Queens) sounded the alarm over the administration’s new limit on shelter stays, calling it “puzzling” since the city had vowed to ensure the safety of families – but stopped short of criticizing the challenge to right to shelter.
“As it stands right now, people need still need a place to stay, they will still need a place to live [and] people are still coming in as we speak right now.” she said when asked about the potential compromise at an unrelated press conference Thursday.
“So we’ll continue to lean on the fact that New York is still a sanctuary city.” she added.
In a statement, a City Hall spokesperson reiterated the administration’s position that right to shelter – also known as the Callahan decree – “was never intended to apply to the extraordinary circumstances our city faces today as more than an average of 10,000 migrants continue to enter our city every month seeking shelter.”
“With more than 130,000 asylum seekers coming through our intake system since the spring of 2022, and with projected costs of more than $12 billion over three years, it is abundantly clear that the status quo cannot continue,” the spokesperson said Thursday.
“The city is not seeking to terminate Callahan; we are simply asking for the city’s obligation’s to be aligned with those of the rest of the state during states of emergency.”