Mayor Eric Adams’ policy forcing migrant families out of local shelters after 60 days has been implemented in a “haphazard” way without adequate written guidelines, training, evaluation and social services, according to a new audit by the city comptroller.
Comptroller Brad Lander’s inquiry found a dearth of “intensive case management” that the Adams administration had promised for departing migrants. City officials had said those services would help migrant families connect with work certification classes, legal help and other assistance.
Auditors in Lander’s office found those promises to be “empty,” based on a review of internal training documents. The results bolster claims from immigration and housing advocates who have complained for months that the city hasn’t done enough to help recent arrivals.
“This is not a policy designed or implemented to help families achieve stable housing and self sufficiency and integrate into our city,” Lander said on Thursday, referring to the 60-day limit on shelter stays for migrant families. “It was a policy designed to churn people through a system … and to push them out of the shelter system with no regard for where they landed, with no regard for the impact on their kids education, and with no regard for their actual path forward to stable housing, employment and self-sufficiency.”
Kayla Mamelak, a spokesperson for Adams, said the city has policies in place for some of the areas highlighted in the comptroller report, including for pregnant women and migrants with disabilities. She didn’t immediately respond to a request to provide documentation of those policies.
“While several suggestions made in the comptroller’s report are already part of our policy, any ideas on how to improve our herculean work are welcome and will be considered,” Mamelak said in a statement. She also highlighted the administration’s efforts to keep migrant families from sleeping on the street and echoed its long-standing calls for more federal aid and immigration reforms.
As of April 28, the city had handed out 60-day notices to 10,229 families, including 18,149 children, and most of them had left the shelter system entirely, according to Lander’s report. City officials have said they do not track where migrants who leave shelter end up, citing privacy concerns and a lack of similar tracking for people who stay in the city’s traditional shelters.
The report’s findings repeat Lander’s earlier broadsides against the administration’s limits on shelter stays, which he and immigrant advocates have decried as unwarranted. It also criticizes city officials’ touting of the limits as a cost-saving measure and points to additional costs that have been incurred as a result of them.
According to the comptroller’s office, case workers connect migrants to city-funded transportation to other locations and set up appointments to apply for asylum. But they are not instructed to provide further assistance, such as directing migrants to help with work permits, housing aid or immigration legal benefits, the report found.
The comptroller also addressed what he called “arbitrary” and previously unknown rules that sometimes subject migrant families with elementary school-age children to frequent moves between shelters. When those families reapply for shelter after being forced to leave, they are denied placement in shelters operated by the city Department of Homeless Services, where families would be insulated from the shelter limits due to stricter state rules for traditional homeless shelters, the auditors wrote.
Lander renewed his calls for the Adams administration to eliminate the 60-day rule at a Thursday morning press conference across the street from the Row Hotel, an emergency shelter in Midtown where the first migrant families were evicted under the stay limits. The report said the city should at least correct the “critical shortcomings” by providing families with more information about the policy and ramping up social services.
Adams has staunchly defended the limits on shelter stays, which he announced last July for single adult migrants and expanded to migrant families in October. He initially billed the restrictions as a necessary measure to cut costs and nudge migrants to exit the city’s strained shelter system.
The administration has credited the declining number of migrants in local shelters with helping to slash the multibillion-dollar cost projections of caring for the new arrivals. The mayor touted the success of his cost-trimming measures for migrants in his latest executive budget, released on April 24.
In January, shortly after evictions began for migrant families under the 60-day policy, the administration announced it would exempt pregnant women in their third trimester and families with newborns. The decision came after fierce outcry over the eviction of a migrant woman who was more than eight months pregnant on the first day the rule went into effect.
But the exemptions were never communicated in writing to city agencies or shelter providers, according to Lander’s investigation. The city also lacks policies and training materials for transferring migrant families’ belongings after they switch shelters and on “reasonable accommodations” for migrants with disabilities, the report found.
The report also said the eviction notices provided to migrant families do not advise them of their right to reapply for shelter after 60 days, exemptions to the rule, or their ability to request that their personal belongings be held after they’re required to leave shelter.
The findings do not address single adult migrants, who are soon set to face stricter limits under a recent court settlement over the city’s right-to-shelter policies. Single adult migrants will continue to be evicted from shelters after 30 or 60 days, depending on their age — and now, unlike families, they will only be able to extend their stays under “extenuating circumstances.”
While the exact details of how the city will determine those shelter extensions remain unclear, the criteria may include migrants’ efforts to find jobs, apply for asylum and move out of shelter, according to the settlement agreement.
City officials have pledged that adult migrants facing potential evictions will see a case manager three times during each 30-day span where they’re staying in shelter, according to Josh Goldfein, a senior staff attorney at the nonprofit Legal Aid Society who is monitoring the implementation of the settlement.
“If people haven’t been provided with any assistance in doing [moving out of shelter], if they don’t have access to the tools that they need to move out, then it’s absolutely not fair to say to them, ‘we don’t think you did enough,'” he said at the press conference on Thursday. “We have to help people do what they want to do, which is again, to move out of shelter to support their families to live independently.”