Migrant families with children won’t be forced to leave their homeless shelters during the holidays, but still face unclear directives from the city and a looming deadline to find other housing or reapply for shelter.
The first wave of families who received 60-day notices to leave their shelters were originally slated to be moved right after Christmas. Now, the Adams administration says it will let them stay an extra week.
“We just don’t want it to be optics,” Councilmember Rita Joseph said in an interview, calling on the administration to fully rescind the measure, which she said threatened to destabilize families and children. “Despite the delay in implementing the policy, they will still experience long-lasting effects. This is another form of displacement. This is inhumane.”
The delay came amid growing pressure from advocates, city councilmembers and the city’s largest teachers union, who all warned the policy would create chaos and traumatize children in the middle of the holidays, especially during their break from school.
City Hall spokesperson Kayla Mamelak declined to say when the first families would be asked to leave, but said those who still need shelter after their first 60 days will have to reapply for housing at the migrant intake center at the Roosevelt Hotel. News of the temporary reprieve was first reported by the news site The City.
Families who were in the city’s care the longest were first to receive 60-day notifications on a rolling basis.
The move is meant to encourage families to seek other forms of housing, working with caseworkers to reach out to friends or family in the city who could take them in, City Hall officials said. But many of the families have nowhere to go, according to migrants and their advocates.
“As we’ve said for months, we’re going to continue to treat people humanely, make adjustments as necessary, and do everything in our power to avoid having families with children be forced to sleep on the streets,” Mamelak said in a statement.
“But, with more than 67,200 migrants still currently in our care, and thousands more continuing to arrive every week, we have used every possible corner of New York City and are, quite simply, out of good options to shelter migrants,” she added.
Copies of the 60-day notices reviewed by Gothamist in English and Spanish neither tell families they can reapply for shelter nor direct them to do so at the Roosevelt Hotel once their stays have expired.
The letters also don’t provide any information on what a move means for children, or that kids have the right to remain in their school, even if they relocate. The three-quarter page notice gives families the date they have to leave their shelter, warning them they may be moved before their time is up.
“This policy has always been cruel and leaves more questions than answers,” said Josh Goldfein, staff attorney at the Legal Aid Society. “Forcing families from shelter — especially around the holiday — and exposing them to the elements is a completely flawed and heartless approach toward bolstering shelter capacity and ensuring the well-being of this extremely vulnerable population.”
The pending upheaval is making parents feel desperate and unable to sleep, unsure of where they’ll find affordable homes and — most of all — worried about what the displacement will mean for their children, who are already well-settled into their schools, families and advocates said.
Some say they’ve called landlords with no luck. Others told Gothamist they have no money, no work, and nowhere else to stay.
“Right now I don’t have any place that I can go,” said Mohammad Akmal Yosufzai, 29, who arrived in New York from Afghanistan in January. “I told them already that I don’t know any family here. Like, I don’t have nothing here.”
Yosufzai has three children, one of whom was born a month ago as a U.S. citizen. Still, his family has until the end of January to find a place to live, or pack up from his Manhattan shelter and reapply for shelter.
About 3,300 families with children have received 60-day notices — and now a one-week extension — since the city announced its latest policy in October. Adult migrants with no children are already subject to 30- day limits.
The city is sheltering about 15,000 migrant families, comprising roughly 50,000 individuals, according to its latest available numbers. But only about 40% of families in the city’s care are subject to the 60-day policy — those living in an emergency shelter system outside the city’s traditional shelters run by the Department of Homeless Services.
“They just don’t know what to do,” Margot Sigmone, vice president for early childhood programs at local nonprofit Children’s Aid, said of families she works with who are facing eviction. “It’s a sense of loss. It’s a sense of frustration.”
Families with eviction notices said they’ve exhausted shelter staff with their questions and are reaching out to organizations who have previously helped them find affordable housing elsewhere. But they said they largely have no other option than to ask the city for another shelter placement once their stays expire.
Arezo Mohammadi, 30, said she’s mostly worried about her three children, who are all in the same school in Brooklyn.
“They’re learning English,” she said in Farsi, through a translator. “They get along with their friends, especially my older daughter. She has friends and she doesn’t want to leave her friends. She’s saying ‘I don’t want to change school.’”
Mohammadi arrived in the city in July, after fleeing Afghanistan with her family. She said she used to run a beauty salon for women there and that she left so her two daughters could get an education and have a future. Under Taliban rule, girls can’t go to school past the sixth grade.
Mohammadi said her family has to be out of their shelter in the first week of January.
“When we shortchange families, we in many ways as a society, as a city, are shooting ourselves in the foot,” said Dante Bravo, a policy analyst with Children’s Aid. “Because ultimately, these families will still need services and they’ll still somehow find us, but not after some significant harm has already happened to them.”
Leave a Reply