Mayor Adams’ New 60-Day Shelter Limit Blasted by Migrants

NEW YORK (New York Daily News/TNS) — As word spread of a new city policy that will limit shelter stays to 60 days at a time for adult male migrants, asylum seekers are angry and worried about ending up in the streets.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams on Wednesday announced a new city policy that will boot single male migrants from shelters — he says to make way for migrant families and alleviate the stressed, overburdened system.

Those who fall under the policy have 60 days to find “alternative housing.” If they can’t, they must leave their shelter and return to the city’s migrant intake center at the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown Manhattan, where they’ll be able to reapply for shelter. The Adams administration says the migrants will be able to reapply, and find beds in the shelter system again.

But migrants staying in a shelter in Midtown told The New York Daily News the new rule is yet another hurdle to building a life for themselves in New York City.

“It’s too short,” Ricardo Perez, 32, said of the 60-day limit. He gestured up at the building where he is staying, the Candler Building in Midtown, just off Times Square. The skyscraper is one of more than a dozen humanitarian emergency response and relief centers in the city.

“After those 60 days, what are they going to do with all the people who are up there? Where are they going to put them? Where will we go?”

Without legal job prospects, family or friends in New York and almost nonexistent paths to more permanent living arrangements, they are worry they will wind up sleeping on the streets.

Perez said he dreams of eventually getting an apartment and job of his own, but can’t save up by working jobs that last just a couple days.

“Most of us don’t have work,” he said. “I don’t want to sleep on the street. How is this right? I’m alone here. I don’t have a job right now. What if I don’t get a job? And here at 60 days, where am I going to go? Where?”

Migrants have no guarantee of getting a new bed right away. Adams said that more than 90,000 migrants have arrived since last spring, and that nearly 55,000 are currently in the city’s shelter system. The city shelter system is currently at capacity with more than 100,000 people, according to city estimates.