New York City will allow migrant families with children in kindergarten through sixth grade to stay in the same shelter past their 60-day eviction notices if needed, Mayor Eric Adams announced on Monday.
Under the new policy, migrant families who need more time in the city’s care will remain in the same shelter they were assigned to for their first 60 days in the system. Previously, migrant families who reached their time limits without securing housing outside of city shelters would have to receive new placements at the city’s Roosevelt Hotel intake center.
City Hall says the move will allow children to attend the same schools without the city spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on bussing them from farther distances.
Additionally, the city announced it will create a central mail location for all migrants living in Big Apple shelters, ensuring that residents continue to have access to their correspondence regardless of whether they change shelter sites or leave the system altogether.
Migrants in city shelters receive many important notices in the mail such as updates on their asylum cases, approval for Temporary Protected Status and whether they were granted work authorization.
“The new policies we’re implementing today will build on our successes, save taxpayers millions, and help even more migrants take their next steps towards fulfilling their American Dream,” Adams said in a statement.
The Adams administration has faced constant backlash over its handling of the migrant influx, which has seen approximately 223,000 newcomers arrive in the five boroughs since the spring of 2022, according to City Hall. Among those criticisms were that the 60-day limit for migrant families would be disruptive to children’s schooling and that moving between different shelters could cause them to miss important notices in the mail.
“By allowing families with school-age children to remain in their original shelters, we aim to minimize disruptions to their education and significantly decrease transportation-related costs,” Camille Joseph Varlack, the mayor’s chief of staff, said in a statement.
The city also touted a steady decline in its migrant shelter census over the past nine weeks. There are now roughly 59,000 new arrivals in the city’s care, which is a significant drop from the nearly 70,000 living in shelters near the end of last year.
The administration has attributed the drop to more stringent Biden administration border policies that have helped lessen the flow of migrants to cities like New York and its own management of the crisis. City officials point to both their 30 and 60 shelters stay limits and efforts to assist migrants in applying for asylum, TPS, or work authorization in helping ease the burden on its shelters as well.
The mayor’s office says NYC Health + Hospitals, the city’s public hospital system, which runs several large-scale migrant shelters, has conducted over 700,000 meetings with newcomers aimed at assisting them in leaving the system. They also say the city’s Asylum Seeker Application Help Center has aided in submitting over 84,000 asylum, TPS and work authorization applications since opening last year.
“We’re doing everything we can to make sure that our shelter system serves its purpose as a soft landing spot for new arrivals — not their final landing spot,” Adams said. “And with our census declining for the past 19 weeks in a row, it’s clear that our efforts are working.”
In recent weeks, the declining shelter census has led the administration to begin scaling down some of its migrant crisis efforts. Those include announcing plans to close the mega-migrant shelter on Randall’s Island by February and ending a program that distributed pre-paid debit cards to some migrants to purchase food.
The policy changes follow the election of Republican President-elect Donald Trump earlier this month. Trump has pledged to significantly crack down on immigration into the US and execute mass deportations of undocumented migrants across the country.
It is unclear whether or not the mayor would cooperate with federal deportation efforts in the five boroughs, as the city has sanctuary laws that bar local law enforcement from sharing information with federal immigration authorities.
While Adams says he is against mass deportation, he also says he is against large numbers of migrants flooding into cities like New York, which he calls “mass saturation.” Furthermore, he has repeatedly said the city’s sanctuary laws should not apply to those who commit violent crimes.
