END SHELTER INSANITY

AS someone who has experienced homelessness in New York City for most of my life, I understand our housing crisis intimately. The lack of affordable housing and pathways out of shelters has defined my existence.

Now, 42 years after the Callahan Decree established a “right to shelter,” I support Mayor Adams’ efforts to reform this well-intentioned but flawed legal settlement.

When Callahan was settled in 1981, it provided life-saving protections for those living on the streets and in the subways with nowhere to turn. The court rightly intervened when the city failed to act humanely.

But the policy at the time called for 125 beds to be secured immediately. It’s clear that no one could have contemplated the humanitarian crisis we face today, with tens of thousands of asylum seekers arriving in New York City.

Shelters were meant as emergency transitional housing until people found permanent affordable housing. Instead, for countless New Yorkers like me, shelters have become our indefinite reality. The average stay now exceeds a year.

Even more troubling, the vast majority living in these shelters are black and brown New Yorkers. As gentrification pushed thousands from their homes, the city’s insufficient investments for decades in affordable housing left many with nowhere to go except the shelters.

I’ve lived in that system for over a decade, including at the Lucerne Hotel where I became an advocate for my fellow residents. What I’ve seen first-hand is not what was intended by Callahan.

That is why I challenged the previous mayor’s attempt to shuffle me between hotel shelters during the pandemic. I wanted to expose Callahan’s failure to address the real needs of people residing in shelters. The rigid focus on temporary shelters enabled the financially unsustainable shelter-industrial complex.

If we truly want to uplift marginalized communities, we need to invest in real housing solutions. This is what Mayor Adams has committed to doing. Since taking office he’s made building more affordable housing and moving people out of shelter and into permanent homes a top priority.

He’s announced bold plans to build more housing in every neighborhood, and cut red tape to move families out of shelter faster. Last fiscal year, the city increased overall permanent housing placements from shelter by 17%, representing thousands of people placed on a path to stability.

Now, with migrants arriving by the thousands, the need to reform Callahan is urgent. The mayor has warned the city’s shelters are already at full capacity and can’t accommodate an unlimited influx.

There simply is not enough physical space or resources to provide quality shelter and services to existing residents and over 65,000 migrants in addition to the average of more than 10,000 new migrants continuing to arrive month after month. The current situation is financially and logistically unworkable.

It’s clear that the influx of asylum seekers into New York City is a national crisis that requires the federal and state government to provide real support to New York City.

Asylum seekers are largely not eligible for affordable-housing programs and other public benefits, making the solutions to this crisis different from the solutions we need to address homelessness.

We need the federal government to provide more financial support, enact a resettlement-and-decompression plan across the state and the country and expedite work authorization for more migrants.

No city has unlimited capacity to shelter the entire world. With shelters already stretched beyond limits, reform is needed so that New York is not compelled to provide indefinite shelter regardless of actual capacity and resources during this crisis.

Our brothers and sisters who are coming here seeking a better life should be given the opportunity to experience that better life and not be placed in a situation that is unsustainable.

As we work to overcome systemic racism and correct injustices that displaced so many people of color, we must recognize that a rigid “right to shelter” is insufficient.

The time is now to learn from the unintended consequences of the past. With public will, we can reshape Callahan to align with the needs of the present, galvanize the federal government to do their job and continue investing in long-overdue pathways to permanent, affordable housing for all New Yorkers.