NYC Mayor Eric Adams says city shelters at 'breaking point' due to migrant surge

New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) suggested Wednesday that the Big Apple’s decades-old “right to shelter” policy, which requires the city provide a shelter bed to every homeless New Yorker, must be “reassessed.”

City Hall said in a statement that the influx of “more than 11,000 people predominantly from Central and South America” had pushed the city’s shelter system to its limits.

“In this new and unforeseen reality, where we expect thousands more to arrive every week going forward, the city’s system is nearing its breaking point,” Adams said in the statement.

“As a result, the city’s prior practices, which never contemplated the bussing of thousands of people into New York City, must be reassessed.”

Adam’s statement does not explicitly mention the right to shelter but the practices he hopes to “reassess” are driven by the 1979 court settlement between the Coalition for the Homeless and the administration of then-mayor Ed Koch, reports the New York Post.

The case established a constitutional right to shelter, requiring City Hall to provide a bed in a habitable facility for every homeless man, woman, child and family in New York City.

The mayor’s statement comes shortly after the Coalition for the Homeless and Legal Aid accused his administration of breaching the shelter requirement.

“It is now clear that this administration simply does not have a handle on the city’s sprawling homelessness crisis and the serious capacity issues in the Department of Homeless Services’ (DHS) shelters,” they said in a joint statement on Tuesday.

The civil rights organizations said they were “extremely alarmed” and threatened to go to court if the city continued “to deprive our clients this codified right.”

The Big Apple is the destination of multiple routes from the U.S.-Mexico border. The Biden administration has been flying migrants from Texas to an airport just outside New York City since last August.

After months of sending migrant buses to Washington DC, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) began directing some to New York City this August. The Democrat-led city of El Paso has also been sending buses to the Big Apple at the request of migrants themselves.

The number of people in New York City’s shelter system has risen almost 25% since the migrant surge began, from 45,844 people in May to 55,485 on Monday, according to city officials.