New York, NY: September 30, state representatives and city elected officials, alongside housing and immigration advocates, rallied on the steps of City Hall in opposition to Mayor Adams\u2019 planned tent city for newly arrived asylum seekers. The Mayor\u2019s recent announcement of two \u201cHumanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Centers\u201d has drawn criticism from local elected officials, advocacy organizations, and grassroots groups alike. Many have voiced concerns over the seemingly complex transportation logistics of moving hundreds of people regularly from the Port Authority to Orchard Beach, as well as the possible legal implications of such a site in regards to the State\u2019s Right To Shelter law.
\nMock-up pictures of what can only be described as a refugee camp show beds packed closely together in tight quarters in clear violation of guidance for safe shelter.
\n\u201cEveryone, regardless of where they are from, is guaranteed shelter in New York City. This Mayor may be more comfortable shipping asylum seekers to a parking lot almost an hour away from the Port Authority, but we demand real care and support for those who are coming to our city,\u201d said Immigration
\nCommittee Chair, Council Member Shahana Hanif. \u201cAs New York City becomes home to thousands of more asylum seekers, we must guarantee safe, supportive, and humane housing for anyone who needs it. We should be looking at all options, from filling empty hotel rooms to converting convention centers, to ensure our city is meeting this moment. Building a refugee camp in a flood zone is not how we address this crisis.\u201d
\nIn July, Mayor Adams came under fire after families were reported to have slept on the floor of a Department of Homeless Services (DHS) intake room, his administration\u2019s first public violation of the Right To Shelter mandate. Then in September, it was reported that close to 60 men were turned away from the shelter system. These incidents are direct violations. In addition to these failures to comply with the law, the Mayor stated on September 19th that the City should \u201crevisit\u201d its Right to Shelter obligations, and then on September 27th admitted outright that the new proposed Orchard Beach HERRCs would not adhere to the City\u2019s Right To Shelter mandate.
\nThe Mayor\u2019s continued failure to deliver safe and adequate shelter to City residents, and asylum seekers, stems from his dysfunctional management of DHS. Even though the City\u2019s current shelter capacity is 5,000 lower than it was under the peak of 60,000 during Mayor de Blasio\u2019s term, the City is still struggling to place people in beds. The influx of asylum seekers, coupled with this administration\u2019s mismanagement, has created a crisis that this Mayor has been unable to tackle. The planned relief centers are yet another example of the Mayor\u2019s unilateral actions to undermine access to safe and accessible shelter while lowering the bar for acceptable housing to our City\u2019s most vulnerable populations.
\n\u201cRight to shelter has been a moral right throughout our city\u2019s history and a legal right for over four decades,\u201d said Public Advocate Jumaane D. Williams. \u201cWhether your family has lived here for hundreds of years or just arrived yesterday, every New Yorker is entitled to a safe bed. As we confront the unique challenges of this crisis situation, we must both welcome asylum seekers into our community today and prepare them for tomorrow, and I will keep fighting to ensure everyone has the tools they need for long-term success in our city.\u201d
\n\u201cRight to Shelter isn\u2019t just about being a humane city that treats its residents with dignity, it is also a key pillar of public safety and public health,\u201d
\nsaid Council Member Tiffany Cab\u00e1n. \u201cWe must not roll back our commitment to Right to Shelter and accept sprawling tent cities that amount to makeshift refugee camps; instead, we should push even further to guarantee reliable, comfortable housing for all. Housing is a basic human need, it is a basic human right, and if we are to be a city that respects human life \u2014 as opposed to an extraction zone for the rich to maximize their windfall profits \u2014 we will respect the human rights of our newest neighbors.\u201d
\n\u201cI am mortified by this administration\u2019s decision to build a tent city in the Bronx to receive migrants, even temporarily,\u201d said Council Member Alexa Avil\u00e9s.
\n\u201cAt a time like this, we should not be calling Right to Shelter in question or playing games with people\u2019s lives. While the arrival of thousands of asylum seekers adds pressure to systems that were already at a breaking point, the ways we reduce the shelter
\npopulation have not changed. We must prevent evictions and rein in out-of-control rent hikes, and we need to get people in shelter into housing first and foremost.\u201d
\n\u201cNew York City has a long history of opening its arms to those in need, and we proudly guarantee a right to shelter \u2013 no matter immigration status,\u201d said Council Member Lincoln Restler. \u201cOffering a new New Yorker a cot in a tent on a flooded beach parking lot does not meet our City\u2019s standards and is a misguided approach.\u201d
\n\u201cEvery New Yorker\u2014whether they are new arrivals or not\u2014deserves access to safe housing. Yet the Adams Administration\u2019s solution to our overburdened shelter system is opening a relief camp, in a parking lot prone to flooding, far away from public transportation, schools, and social services,\u201d said Murad Awawdeh, Executive Director, New York Immigration Coalition.
\n\u201cThe plan is being proposed as a temporary stop-gap, but the Administration has provided no information about how people in these \u201ctemporary shelters\u201d will be transitioned to more permanent housing, or even our traditional shelter system \u2014 setting the stage for these camps to become a permanent source of shame for New York.
\nWe\u2019re calling on the Administration to center the needs of the asylum seekers, bring health, housing, and immigrant rights organizations into the decision-making process, and develop a concrete, written plan that will help our newest New Yorkers integrate and thrive.\u201d
\n\u201cThis is only the newest step in what has been a particularly cruel nine months for homeless New Yorkers,\u201d said Karim Walker, Homeless Organizer and Outreach Worker with the Safety Net Project at the Urban Justice Center. \u201cThe Adams administration has repeatedly stated that New York City is welcoming asylum-seekers with \u201copen arms,\u201d but this planned City refugee camp is clearly intended to stop people from accessing shelters they have a right to. Instead of support, the City\u2019s \u201copen arms\u201d will realistically
\nbe followed by a shove out the door, after migrants are told to exit the cots that they\u2019ve been assigned on Orchard Beach. Instead of building massive tents in a flood-prone parking lot, the Adams administration should prioritize using every permanent housing resource at its disposal to empty the shelters, massively resource efforts to fight source-of-income discrimination by landlords, immediately open access to City vouchers to migrants, end the 90-day rule that just keeps homeless people without rental vouchers for months as they languish in shelter, and end all bureaucratic obstacles to placements in supportive housing.\u201d
\n\u201cNew York City\u2019s long-standing right to shelter, which is the first and only in the nation, is available to anyone, regardless of when or how they arrived,\u201d said Bill Bryan, Director of The Civil Justice Practice at Brooklyn Defender Services. \u201cThe city must honor its obligation to provide full access to shelter for all who need it and ensure this right is not denied or obscured by the creation of a parallel and substandard system.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New York, NY: September 30, state representatives and city elected officials, alongside housing and immigration advocates, rallied on the steps of City Hall in opposition to Mayor Adams’ planned tent city for newly arrived asylum seekers. The Mayor’s recent announcement of two “Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Centers” has drawn criticism from local elected officials, advocacy organizations, and grassroots groups alike. Many have voiced concerns over the seemingly complex transportation logistics of moving hundreds of people regularly from the Port Authority to Orchard Beach, as well as the possible legal<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29142,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[30,1,27],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29141"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29141"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29143,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29141\/revisions\/29143"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}