Migrant families whose stays in city-sponsored shelters were due to begin expiring the day after Christmas under a 60-day limit will have at least another week to remain in the facilities, according to an administration source familiar with the deliberations.
Their evictions will be postponed until after New Year’s Day and potentially longer, according to the source, who said the delay came amid internal pressure to set the evictions further back from Christmas. In addition to the optics of ousting families over the holiday, the source noted that many city staffers would be on vacation over the last week of the year, which would have made removing residents more challenging.
Kayla Mamelak, a spokesperson for Mayor Eric Adams, didn’t confirm or deny a delay.
“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,” she said.
Around 3,300 families with children have received 60-day notices, and all of them will receive an extra week, a move the administration source said was intended to avoid a situation where too many families would be going to the Roosevelt Hotel in midtown Manhattan to seek another placement at the same time.
The decision to delay the coming evictions came amid a growing uproar over the new policy, which stands to upend the lives of thousands of school children mid-year.
“I’m relieved to hear that it’s going to be delayed. The policy itself is very problematic to begin with, so the longer they delay it, the better. It’s going to be a mess,” said Jennifer Pringle, a project director at Advocates for Children of New York, a nonprofit that works with homeless children among other vulnerable groups.
“I can’t see how this doesn’t lead to school absences, to mid-year transfers, tremendous upheaval for students, for families, and also schools themselves.”
City officials have yet to specify what will happen to families who have nowhere to go when their time expires, and 60-day notices shared with THE CITY don’t include instructions about what to do when their time is up. Mamelak said families would have an option to reapply for shelter at the Roosevelt Hotel.
An administration source said families could seek a new 60-day shelter placement, and that they would try to reassign them to another shelter within the school district, or at least the borough of the family’s youngest school-age child.
“The most important question is what is their actual plan,” said Josh Goldfein, attorney for the Legal Aid Society, which advocates for homeless New Yorkers and their right to shelter in New York City on behalf of the Coalition for the Homeless. Goldfein was alerted to the delay in evictions by city officials Wednesday, following THE CITY’s inquiry to City Hall. “They gave people these notices, but they didn’t tell us what they’re actually going to do.”
‘Very Destabilizing’
Over the past two weeks, single adult migrants, subject since late September to strict 30-day time limits in shelters, have spent days lining up in the cold waiting for another shelter placement outside a reticketing site in the East Village, spending nights on the floor of indoor waiting rooms, or outside in the cold with limited access to food and no access to running water.
“It certainly raises the question of whether their plan is to send families with children to also wait in the same line for days and days in the freezing cold,” Goldfein said.
At the reticketing site, just over 10% have accepted tickets to leave New York City, THE CITY reported, and over the past two weeks lines have snaked around the building for hours, with people waiting days shuffling between waiting rooms in another borough.
Thus far, migrant families with children have been spared a similar churn. Adams has repeatedly said his main goal is to avoid having families with children sleeping on the streets, which has been common in other cities, including Chicago.
But as the number of migrants in New York City shelters ballooned to more than 65,000 by late October — more than 50,000 of whom were either parents or children in family units — city officials sought more aggressive ways to discourage migrant families from staying in shelters indefinitely, doling out 60-day eviction notices to families at the Row Hotel and other shelters run by the city’s Health and Hospital system and the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development.
The evictions will pose untold difficulty for schools where the children are enrolled. Chalkbeat reported last week that leaders in schools with a significant enrollment of migrant students are bracing for the impact of the shelter evictions but in many cases are operating in the dark.
Last week, Department of Education officials testified at a City Council hearing that while the Department of Homeless Services shares data daily about where homeless students live so schools can act accordingly, they have no access to data from Health and Hospitals or Department of Housing Preservation and Development — the two agencies that are set to begin evicting families.
“I can only imagine the type of scrambling the principals will have to do. There’s not an office where a principal could call to find out where families are. There’s no data sharing agreement. It’s going to be very destabilizing,” Pringle said.
“One day, 40 of their kids are not going to be there,” she said.
Mayor Adams has also promised that no child’s education will be disrupted, in accordance with federal law that requires parents be allowed to keep their children in their original school if preferred. But advocates say in practice it’s never that simple, and shelter transfers regularly cause days and weeks of disruptions for schools and students, and often incentivize parents to switch schools so they’re closer to their new shelter.
‘Wrong on So Many Levels’
With the deadline for family evictions looming, opposition to the city’s plan is mounting. Council members railed about the 60-day notices at a hearing last week, though officials from the agencies giving out the notices didn’t show up.
“We cannot move these families. It is so wrong on so many levels,” Upper West Side Councilmember Gale Brewer testified. “I just want to make it really clear, people are so upset. Do not move these families. That would be the number one thing to do for their future.”
The United Federation of Teachers, which represents nearly two hundred thousand current and former public school teachers, also came out against the policy on Tuesday, about a month after the notices were first sent out, launching a petition calling on the city to walk it back.
“New York City cannot toss children out on the street in the middle of winter,” UFT President Michael Mulgrew said in a statement. “The Mayor’s eviction policy will disrupt that trust by forcing newcomers to reapply for emergency shelter beds every 60 days or find alternative housing. It is a policy that makes a difficult situation more chaotic and increases the likelihood of our students and their families winding up on the streets.”
On Tuesday afternoon, housing advocates marched up Broadway from Bowling Green to City Hall, rallying in support of the city’s decades-old right to shelter, and against Adams and Governor Kathy Hochul’s efforts to roll those protections back, including policies like the 60-day notices for families.
Comptroller Brad Lander, who joined the demonstrators, said he was worried about the uncertainty families faced.
“That is unconscionable and we’re not going to let it happen,” he said.
‘Wait, Wait, Wait’
The eviction notices have sent shockwaves through impacted shelters, with families scrambling to save up money if they’re working. Many others without stable employment said they were terrified of what might happen when their time runs out.
Lorena Curay, 42, who lives at the Row Hotel with her husband, two children and one grandchild, said they had no idea what they would do when their time expires in early January. Every 15 days, she’s summoned to meet with a social worker who offers little guidance about what the future holds, she said.
“They don’t tell me anything. They just tell me wait, wait, wait,” she said in Spanish. One social worker mentioned them being able to request another time-limited stint in shelter after her time was up, but Curay said she feared the family would be sent to the newly opened tent shelter for families at Floyd Bennett Field.
“What are we going to do there, it’s so cold,” she said. “Some families are borrowing money to [rent an apartment] and some people are returning to Ecuador.”
Her husband, Luis Cuasatar, added that the family fled gang violence in Ecuador after their daughter’s boyfriend was killed. But living in New York City had been more difficult than he could have possibly imagined.
“You think there are going to be lots of opportunities to work, but now with all the immigrants, there’s not as much,” he said in Spanish. “Getting work is really hard. But with God’s help I’ll keep fighting here.”