Mayor Adams wants to reassess New York’s right to shelter. Can he?
The decades-old shelter policy would have to go back to court to be undone, experts say.
This article was originally published on by THE CITY .
For decades, New York has had a right to shelter, meaning that anyone who does not have a roof over their head can get one through the city-run homeless shelter system.
That right has been tested in recent weeks by a new challenge: an influx of thousands of Central and South American asylum-seekers who have arrived in the city with no places to live, no jobs, and hardly any possessions.
Amid the pressure to find emergency housing for them, Mayor Eric Adams seemed to cast doubt on the long-standing right to shelter, saying in a statement that it “must be reassessed.”