NYC Will No Longer Shelter Migrant Adults After 30 Days

New York’s longstanding legal obligation to provide shelter to homeless people will be scaled back significantly under a settlement agreement announced on Friday that was reached amid the city’s continuing struggle to house thousands of migrants.

To ease the burden on the city’s shelter system, adult migrants will be allowed to stay in shelters for only 30 days under the agreement, city officials said. Some would be allowed to stay longer if they met certain conditions, including having a medical disability or an “extenuating circumstance,” officials said.

The changes to the so-called right-to-shelter requirement are a major shift in a policy that had set New York apart from all other big U.S. cities. In no other city must officials guarantee a bed to any homeless person who seeks one, something city officials have alternately taken pride in and fought against for decades.

The agreement, stemming from a state court case being overseen by Justice Gerald Lebovits, resolved months of negotiations between city officials and the plaintiffs in the original consent decree that established the right-to-shelter requirement, who are being represented by the Legal Aid Society.

The new rules, which will take effect immediately, are meant to apply temporarily to how the city responds to the migrant crisis, which has led more than 180,000 migrants to pass through the city’s shelter system since the spring of 2022.

Under the agreement, younger adult migrants 18 to 23 would have up to 60 days in the shelter system before having to move out. Migrant families with children would not be affected, and can still stay in shelters for up to 60 days, with the option of reapplying, city officials said.

The settlement is a major victory for Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, who has spent almost a year trying to weaken the right-to-shelter requirement.

Mr. Adams’s administration has increased the number of shelters, converted hotels to shelters and opened tent dormitories to house the 65,000 migrants still under the city’s care, 22 percent of whom are single adults or adult families, according to city officials. The mayor has warned that the financial burden created by the migrants is straining the city’s budget, will cost $10 billion over three years and threatens “to destroy” the city.

Mr. Adams has said he does not want to end the right to shelter permanently, but to modify it significantly to relieve the city of having to house so many migrants. His main argument is that the 1981 consent decree that established the requirement never anticipated an influx of migrants arriving with nowhere to live.

On Friday, Judge Lebovits echoed that argument in describing the five months of negotiations that led to the settlement.

“Over the last year or so, the migrant crisis stemming from large numbers of migrants arriving in New York City stretched to the breaking point the city’s ability to comply with existing requirements” of the consent decree, the judge said. “Our goal has always been to find a way for all parties to think creatively to find a resolution that would advance each party’s interests.”

The legal wrangling over the requirement began in May, when the mayor sought legal permission to alter the consent decree’s term so that homeless adults and adult families could be denied shelter if the city lacked sufficient resources and space to provide it.

In October, as migrants continued to strain the shelter system, the administration went further, asking a judge to allow it to suspend its legal obligation to provide shelter to single adults. Officials argued that the city should be able to temporarily lift the requirement during an emergency or when faced with an influx of people seeking shelter.

“We have been clear, from day one, that the ‘right to shelter’ was never intended to apply to a population larger than most U.S. cities descending on the five boroughs in less than two years,”Mr. Adams said in a statement on Friday.

“Today’s stipulation acknowledges that reality and grants us additional flexibility during times of crisis, like the national humanitarian crisis we are currently experiencing,” he added.

Lawyers for the Legal Aid Society emphasized that the city would be required to extend shelter stays for migrant adults beyond the 30- and 60-day limits on a case-by-case basis if, for example, they showed they were trying diligently to find a place to stay outside the system.

“The city will consider each of those requests individually based on the totality of that person’s circumstances, and make a determination of how much time they might need,” Joshua Goldfein, a staff attorney at Legal Aid, said in court.

Camille Baker contributed reporting.