New York City asked a court on Tuesday to temporarily suspend a rule that requires all homeless people to be provided with housing, a rule that has attracted 70,000 immigrants to the city in ten months and strained city resources. limit has been increased. , The City Legal Department sent a letter to the Manhattan Supreme Court requesting that the law in practice since 1984 (Callahan v. Carey) be amended, without specifying how long the suspension would last, although Mayor Eric Adams specified in a statement. that “we are not in any way seeking abolition of the right to shelter”.
The influx of immigrants has saturated public shelters and the city is paying thousands of dollars a day to the nearly 150 hotels it has to rent in the city and in some counties in the state’s north – where it has faced resistance. There is – both families with children as well as single adults to accommodate. According to the mayor, $1,000 million has already been spent on providing them with various services in addition to shelter, such as food, school places for minors who have come with their families, and minimal medical services.
Adams, who has repeatedly asked the federal government for financial aid and to expedite work permits for the thousands of immigrants it provides housing, made it clear that with this judicial safeguard, he is supporting Joe Biden. Wants to implicate the government or, at least for other cities. “Since we cannot provide care to an unlimited number of people and we are already overworked, it is in everyone’s best interest, including those who want to come to the United States, to be honest. that the city cannot provide its own care.” My. Everyone who crosses our border,” he said. “Being dishonest about it will only result in the collapse of our system, and we need our partners in the (federal) government to know the truth and do their part.”
He said today’s action will allow him to “get clarity from the court and preserve the right to housing for the tens of thousands in our care who were previously both homeless and asylum seekers.” “We now have more asylum seekers than homeless New Yorkers,” he said.
A good portion of those arriving in New York have done so on trips organized by Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas, who has taken chartered buses across the border from Mexico with hundreds of immigrants on the grounds that “progressive cities”—New York, Washington and Chicago, Democratic Along with the mayors, there would be open arms to the immigrants crowding the border. However, of those three cities, New York is the only one that by law must provide mandatory housing for anyone.
The city’s decision to resort to the judiciary to eliminate this obligation immediately caused a reaction from the New York Road Builders Organization, which provides services to immigrants, who described it as “beyond despair”. . “It’s a surefire way to ensure that more and more people sleep on the streets, not the way to address homelessness and the needs of asylum seekers,” said Jose Lopez, the organization’s co-executive director.
