Rally: KO shelter limits
Push for Adams to end ‘counterproductive and cruel’ policy
Dozens of City Council members and advocates called on Mayor Adams on Monday to halt shelter stay limits for migrant families, with Council Speaker Adrienne Adams slamming the policy as “counterproductive and cruel.”
“The negative effects will ripple throughout our communities and schools,” she said at a rally outside a Midtown church.
At least 4,800 families have received eviction notices so far. The 60-day notices started going out late last year, with the first families getting the boot Jan. 9. As the policy gains momentum, around 100 families are expected to be required to leave their shelters every day.
Venezuela asylum seeker Reina Alvarez and her four children, including 3-year-old son Mathias, recently had to move from Queens to Manhattan under the policy.
“My experience of the shelters is changing one day after the next, and it’s putting our children’s education in jeopardy,” she said in Spanish.
“All we want is a better life.” Mayor Adams has maintained the policy is necessary move to free up space in the city’s strained shelter system and encourage migrants to move out on their own.
But the policy has received intense backlash. Monday’s rally was just the latest in a string of calls for the mayor to reverse it; the policy is currently under investigation by city Comptroller Brad Lander.
Councilwoman Diana Ayala (D-Manhattan, Bronx) had strong words for the policy. “Our mayor is a slumlord,” she said.
Advocates and elected officials have raised concerns from the moment the first notices went out about families’ well-being, education and ability to build a new life in New York as they’re subjected to frequent moves.
Single adults are also subject to a similar policy limiting their stays to 30 days in a shelter. When their stays are up, they must reapply for shelter at an East Village site where, for weeks, lines have stretched around the block as migrants wait as long as a week to get a new bed.
“This action actively hurts people, uprooting youth and families with children, forcing them to navigate an unnecessarily burdensome and bureaucratic process to receive a new shelter placement,” Speaker Adams (D-Queens) said at the rally.
Alvarez, 36, a single mother, arrived in New York five months ago. Her kids are scattered across three schools, and it’s a full-time job just taking care of them and navigating the city’s complicated bureaucracy as she gathers her paperwork for asylum and work permits.
“It bothers me and stresses me out that I have to worry that every 60 days I have to change to another shelter, which means that I have to change my children’s school, which affects them drastically,” she said.
Mayor Adams has repeatedly said the influx of thousands of migrants from the southern border is the worst crisis the city is currently facing — and he recently credited a much rosier budget prediction in part on cost savings from the shelter limits.
During a previous budget announcement in November — also when the first family shelter stay notices started going out — Adams announced that he wanted to slash migrant spending by 20%. Citing the migrant crisis, the mayor announced a requirement for every city agency to cut budgets by 5%, on top of other cuts.
“It’s cruel and inhumane to remove children out of schools that are providing them with the basic services and with the community that they need, now more than ever,” Ayala said.
Ayala acknowledged a new policy from Adams administration that gives pregnant migrants in their third trimester and women with newborn babies a break from shelter evictions until their babies are 6 months old, as first reported by The City.
But that’s not enough, Ayala said.
Moving from shelter to shelter in a still-unfamiliar city with children and all their belongings in tow is an enormous burden for these families, she said.
“What is the goal here other than to break down the moral character of these folks?” she asked.
Assemblywoman Inez Dickens, a Democrat and longtime fixture in Harlem politics, said Monday that she intends to retire, capping a political career that included a stint in the City Council leadership.
Last year, Dickens (photo) sought a return to the Council, but came up short in an election campaign against Yusef Salaam, a member of the exonerated Central Park 5 who went on to the win the general election. Dickens will retire when her term concludes at the end of the year, said her spokeswoman Tyquana Rivers.
Dickens, a daughter of the trailblazing Assemblyman Lloyd Dickens, has served in the Assembly since 2017. Previously, she held a Council seat in Harlem for more than a decade. On the Council, she spent four years as majority whip and four years as assistant deputy majority leader.
“It has been a humbling journey to work as a servant leader in city and state government,” Dickens, 74, said in a statement Monday. “I look forward to continuing to work on the issues that are near and dear to my heart.”
Dickens has helped pave the way for the creation of a new 400,000-square-foot mixed-use complex on 125th St. set to include a civil rights museum and 170 affordable housing units, according to a statement released by her spokeswoman. Rivers said Dickens plans to continue to work to combat the city’s housing crisis after she leaves office.
“She’s a legend,” former Rep. Charles Rangel, Harlem’s voice in Congress for decades, said of Dickens. “And she has a long history of producing for the community.”
Rangel said by phone that he expects Dickens’ “voice will continue to be heard in the community that she has served so well.”
Dickens, a moderate Democrat, may have grown somewhat uncomfortable with the Assembly’s leftward drift. She strongly opposes so-called good-cause eviction — far-reaching anti-eviction legislation — putting her at odds with Albany progressives. And her work as a landlord sometimes drew scrutiny from her left. Evictions reportedly carried out by Dickens’ family management company were a point of contention in last year’s Council race.
Her exit opens up a race for the Assembly’s 70th District, which stretches from the northern perimeter of Central Park up through central Harlem to 145th St.
Rangel said that he has heard from several people who are considering runs.
At least three candidates have publicly launched campaigns.
Joshua Clennon, a 31-year-old affordable-housing activist who has served as treasurer of the local community board, has been running for the seat since September. In a phone call Monday, he described Dickens as a “pillar in our community.”
Also already in the campaign fray: Maria Ordoñez, a progressive organizer, and Shana Harmongoff, a seniors’ and mental health advocate.
Ordoñez, a 24-year-old who said she is running to “stop gentrification” and “fight for the people,” expressed appreciation for Dickens’ service, but said that it was “about time” that she stepped aside for a younger generation.
Harmongoff, 41, had more effusive praise for the outgoing assemblywoman, calling her the “Queen of Harlem” and saying that she has “done a phenomenal job.”
A fourth candidate who appears to have his eye on the seat is Jordan Wright, son of Keith Wright, the chairman of the Manhattan Democratic Party. City & State reported last week that a fundraising effort had been launched for the younger Wright to run for Dickens’ seat.
A “Wright for New York” campaign committee was registered last Thursday, according to state Board of Elections records.
Wright, who is Salaam’s chief of staff, said by text Monday that he cares “a great deal about the future of Harlem,” but that his thoughts were focused on Dickens and the “years of service she and her family have committed to the village we call home.”
He wrote that he would reach a decision on his run “soon.”