NYC's 'Right To Shelter' Could Face Changes Amid Migrant Surge: Mayor

NEW YORK CITY — Amid an influx of migrants being shipped to New York City by Republican governors, City Hall officials tried to tamp down fears Mayor Eric Adams plans to alter the city's "right to shelter" protections.

Adams himself fueled those concerns when he said Wednesday the city should reassess the right to shelter, which guarantees unhoused people will have a bed.

By Thursday morning, the city's top lawyer Brendan McGuire stood alongside Adams at an intake center for asylum seekers and argued the mayor was misinterpreted.

"We are not reassessing the right to shelter," McGuire said. "We are reassessing the city's practices that have developed around the right to shelter."

The controversy came after 60 migrants were forced to sleep in a city office Monday — an apparent violation of the right to shelter that attracted criticism from, among others, attorneys for The Legal Aid Society.

Legal Aid attorneys said they understood the added strain on city resources, but argued that everyone — asylum seekers included — is entitled to shelter under the law.

"This principle has been settled for decades, and is not subject to unilateral tinkering by a new administration," they said in a statement.

Adams said 11,000 migrants have entered the city's shelter system in recent months. He has accused Texas Gov. Greg Abbott of covertly shipping asylum seekers to New York City — a charge that Abbott responded to by publicly and repeatedly sending busloads of migrants to Port Authority Bus Terminal.

"NYC is the ideal destination for these migrants," Abbott tweeted.

Abbott's actions received widespread condemnation from Adams and advocates, who argued the governor is using human beings as political props.

City officials have nonetheless worked to help the migrants, but McGuire said the influx is an "unprecedented development" within the right to shelter.

"Obviously, none of those practices developed with anyone contemplating that there were going to be over 10,000 individuals bused into New York with no connection to New York from overseas," he said. "And so we have to reassess all of the ways in which those practices have developed to determine whether we are making these decisions as efficiently as possible. And obviously always in accord with the right to shelter."