NYC To Enact 60-Day Limit For Migrant Families In Homeless Shelters

NEW YORK CITY — New York City could implement a new 60-day limit for migrant families staying in city-run homeless shelters, officials said.

The state’s Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance granted the city permission to start issuing 60-day limits. The news was first reported by Gothamist.

About 150 shelters are overseen by the State Department of Homeless Services, and nearly 30,000 migrants and children live in shelters across the city.

Deputy Mayor Anne Williams-Isom confirmed the news during the mayor's weekly press conference on Tuesday.

"We have been talking to OTDA for a while about when we were going to start doing the notices," she said.

"I don’t call them eviction notices, I call them time limits.”

Williams-Isom detailed that they're telling migrants they have 60 days to see if they can find another place to go or have family members that can help them. There's also the opportunity to reapply for another shelter stay if they have nowhere else to go.

"There are preventive steps we're taking. If we build a system, if we've had 212,000 people still in our care, it's not financially sustainable. And it's just not the right things to do to human beings," Mayor Eric Adams said at the press conference.

"People should not be in shelters their entire lives, particularly in a HERRC-type setting. This is traumatizing."