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Progressives are making the New York migrant crisis worse

Mayor Eric Adams has requested the authority to suspend New York’s right to shelter law. Credit: Getty

June 20, 2023 - 1:00pm

The burdens of the US border crisis have been shared unequally. Aside from border cities, no city’s migrant crisis has been more intense than New York’s, and no government system in New York more burdened than its homeless shelters. Providing services for the migrant surge that got going in spring 2022 is estimated to cost New York City more than $4 billion. Most of that sum will go to shelter.

A homeless shelter system operates almost by definition on an emergency footing, for it exists to help people in crisis. But even for longtime observers of New York’s decades-long homelessness struggle, the migrants have provided new lessons in how public policy should not respond to crises.

New York’s migrant woes are largely self-inflicted, rooted in the local “right to shelter” policy that guarantees temporary housing to anyone who needs it. Since the current border crisis began, Chicago has received around 10,000 migrants; Philadelphia around 1,000; New York over 75,000. 

The vast majority of US cities — even sanctuary cities — have no right to shelter. Those jurisdictions who do have one tend to place more qualifications on it than does New York, such as making it apply only in extreme weather (Washington, DC), or just for families (the state of Massachusetts). New York’s right to shelter is uniquely expansive, applying to families and single adults, year-round, regardless of immigration status. Interviews with migrants have attested that they see New York shelters, and the guarantee thereof, as a draw. 

The census in New York’s core shelter system hit a record high back in October, and has soared further since then. Per city officials, the number of migrants New York is now caring for exceeds the entire shelter census (around 45,000) when mayor Eric Adams took office in January 2022.

Shelter, importantly, does not mean permanent housing. But the exit strategy for tens of thousands of migrants in New York is not clear (especially when many are staying in private rooms at the Roosevelt Hotel). New Yorker progressives’ preferred idea for easing the migrant-driven shelter crisis is expanding access to rental vouchers. Yet vouchers only help when they can be applied to a rental unit not already occupied by someone else. The number of apartments currently available and affordable to low income New Yorkers is as low as it has been in three decades.

New York’s right to shelter policy was originally intended to benefit hard up single adults with no alternative to the streets. Border migrants, compared with the native chronically homeless population, are far less impaired by behavioural health disorders and are more mobile. They do have alternatives: they could head to another city, with cheaper housing and no less economic opportunity.

Progressives have always dismissed claims that building shelters encourages homelessness, claiming that no one chooses to live rough, but homeless New Yorkers are diverse — runaway youth, victims of domestic violence, able-bodied ex-offenders, single mums with children, the mentally ill and those struggling with addiction. But due to surging numbers of migrants, officials have to focus exclusively on how to build an ever-larger shelter system, leaving them little bandwidth to strategise about how to build a better one.

To address its migrant challenge, New York’s greatest need is deterrence vis-à-vis other cities. To migrants at the border and now in other cities, it needs to send a message that New York cannot promise a better future for them than elsewhere. Mayor Adams took a step towards deterrence last month by formally requesting the authority to suspend New York’s right to shelter law in the event that city government lacked resources to meet it. Progressive advocates pledged to “vigorously oppose” Adams’s request in court, likening it to Capitol rioters asking President Trump “for a pardon in advance of Jan. 6”.

In years past, some jurisdictions, such as California, have debated establishing a New York-style right to shelter. That chatter has died down since the migrant crisis began. But until the issue is solved at the border, it is highly likely that this problem will only get worse. 


Stephen Eide is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, contributing editor of City Journal, and author of Homelessness in America (Rowman & Littlefield 2022).

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Mark Goodhand
Mark Goodhand
10 months ago

#LOL
If New Yorkers aren’t going to vote for someone who will secure America’s borders, it’s only fair that they bear the brunt.

Mark Goodhand
Mark Goodhand
10 months ago

#LOL
If New Yorkers aren’t going to vote for someone who will secure America’s borders, it’s only fair that they bear the brunt.

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
10 months ago

A problem created and compounded by progressives. Shocker. You get the govt you vote for and apparently this is what New Yorkers want. I’m beginning to think people are no longer capable of making reasonable, rational decisions.

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
10 months ago

A problem created and compounded by progressives. Shocker. You get the govt you vote for and apparently this is what New Yorkers want. I’m beginning to think people are no longer capable of making reasonable, rational decisions.

Peter Kwasi-Modo
Peter Kwasi-Modo
10 months ago

Interesting to compare New York and London. The annual rate of international immigration is higher in London than New York. But in London, there is a simultaneous net exodus of British Londoners that numerically cancels out the influx.
Concusion: if only New Yorkers were to start disliking the way that their city is changing and vote with their feet, as is happening in London, then New York would have more freed-up housing available. Problem solved.

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
10 months ago

There is already mass migration out of New York City. The city’s population has been declining for at least four years.

Jerry Carroll
Jerry Carroll
10 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

They’re the ones who pay the taxes, needless to say. The new arrivals will be soaking up cradle-to-grave program revenue for the rest of their lives, Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.” It’s says so on the Statue of Liberty.

Jerry Carroll
Jerry Carroll
10 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

They’re the ones who pay the taxes, needless to say. The new arrivals will be soaking up cradle-to-grave program revenue for the rest of their lives, Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.” It’s says so on the Statue of Liberty.

Belinda Shaw
Belinda Shaw
10 months ago

This is, as we British say, total bollocks. I live in London. We like our city and our international incomers. What does a “British Londoner” mean? Is it some lazy code for “White”? We are all British here in this amazing multiracial city and we rather pity the rest of the country for its lack of variety. People do sometimes leave London, because it is expensive, but never because they want some monoculture fantasy.

Paul Curtin
Paul Curtin
10 months ago
Reply to  Belinda Shaw

What you say Belinda, as we British say, is total bollocks.
I live in an area of London where well over 40% of the population was born overseas and neither I, nor anyone else cares less, we’re all poor sods getting by and we rub along very nicely thanks, so please keep your out of date 1950’s white cockney stereotypes to yourself.
I love all 7 different nationalities in my road without your condescension.
I also feel for them because my parents immigrated from Ireland in WWII and had the pleasure of the “no blacks, no dogs, no Irish” treatment (amidst the bombing and the military service) when they arrived so I don’t care for the race card being played so you can feel progressively good about yourself.
“Lazy code for white” – give me a break.
Lazy progressive posturing on your part.
Having spent 17 years in health and social care I have to point out the differences between your idea of “nice” immigrants with nice degrees, nice kids, nice English and nice jobs in Islington that everybody likes and “makes the place multicultural in a lovely middle class kind of way” and the poor sods in my area on the bottom rung socially who do back to back 12hr shifts on scooters delivering pizza for minimum wage with no opportunities and no English.
I make an effort to tip these guys to make a difference, I bet you don’t because you don’t even notice them. I certainly care about my neighbours.
If you’d care to come down to St Mungo’s in London any evening I can show you a string of tents across the areas streets in central London a stones throw from the high class theatre-land with charity soup kitchens keeping them from starving so your picture of rose tinted London and snooty jibes on here says more about you than it does about the US commentators on here.
Say something worthwhile or say nothing but save your holier than thou posturing Progressive self righteousness.

Last edited 10 months ago by Paul Curtin
Paul Curtin
Paul Curtin
10 months ago
Reply to  Belinda Shaw

What you say Belinda, as we British say, is total bollocks.
I live in an area of London where well over 40% of the population was born overseas and neither I, nor anyone else cares less, we’re all poor sods getting by and we rub along very nicely thanks, so please keep your out of date 1950’s white cockney stereotypes to yourself.
I love all 7 different nationalities in my road without your condescension.
I also feel for them because my parents immigrated from Ireland in WWII and had the pleasure of the “no blacks, no dogs, no Irish” treatment (amidst the bombing and the military service) when they arrived so I don’t care for the race card being played so you can feel progressively good about yourself.
“Lazy code for white” – give me a break.
Lazy progressive posturing on your part.
Having spent 17 years in health and social care I have to point out the differences between your idea of “nice” immigrants with nice degrees, nice kids, nice English and nice jobs in Islington that everybody likes and “makes the place multicultural in a lovely middle class kind of way” and the poor sods in my area on the bottom rung socially who do back to back 12hr shifts on scooters delivering pizza for minimum wage with no opportunities and no English.
I make an effort to tip these guys to make a difference, I bet you don’t because you don’t even notice them. I certainly care about my neighbours.
If you’d care to come down to St Mungo’s in London any evening I can show you a string of tents across the areas streets in central London a stones throw from the high class theatre-land with charity soup kitchens keeping them from starving so your picture of rose tinted London and snooty jibes on here says more about you than it does about the US commentators on here.
Say something worthwhile or say nothing but save your holier than thou posturing Progressive self righteousness.

Last edited 10 months ago by Paul Curtin
Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
10 months ago

There is already mass migration out of New York City. The city’s population has been declining for at least four years.

Belinda Shaw
Belinda Shaw
10 months ago

This is, as we British say, total bollocks. I live in London. We like our city and our international incomers. What does a “British Londoner” mean? Is it some lazy code for “White”? We are all British here in this amazing multiracial city and we rather pity the rest of the country for its lack of variety. People do sometimes leave London, because it is expensive, but never because they want some monoculture fantasy.

Peter Kwasi-Modo
Peter Kwasi-Modo
10 months ago

Interesting to compare New York and London. The annual rate of international immigration is higher in London than New York. But in London, there is a simultaneous net exodus of British Londoners that numerically cancels out the influx.
Concusion: if only New Yorkers were to start disliking the way that their city is changing and vote with their feet, as is happening in London, then New York would have more freed-up housing available. Problem solved.

Stan Konwiser
Stan Konwiser
10 months ago

The New York housing situation is a complete mess that started generations ago with a myriad of rent control laws that have totally distorted the market. This has suppressed private housing creation in all but the luxury level.

The Feds built huge housing projects in the 60’s and turned all those crumbling buildings over to the city years ago. The money that came with it was (and is being) squandered by the city which became the largest slum landlord in the country.

The influx of migrants is just icing on the cake of the Democrat experiment that government is the solution to the problems they create.

Stan Konwiser
Stan Konwiser
10 months ago

The New York housing situation is a complete mess that started generations ago with a myriad of rent control laws that have totally distorted the market. This has suppressed private housing creation in all but the luxury level.

The Feds built huge housing projects in the 60’s and turned all those crumbling buildings over to the city years ago. The money that came with it was (and is being) squandered by the city which became the largest slum landlord in the country.

The influx of migrants is just icing on the cake of the Democrat experiment that government is the solution to the problems they create.

Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
10 months ago

Progressives are making the New York migrant crisis worse
Is there anything progressives do not make worse?

Andrew F
Andrew F
10 months ago

Supply of drugs and criminals?

Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
10 months ago
Reply to  Andrew F

Good point

Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
10 months ago
Reply to  Andrew F

Good point

Andrew F
Andrew F
10 months ago

Supply of drugs and criminals?

Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
10 months ago

Progressives are making the New York migrant crisis worse
Is there anything progressives do not make worse?

Thomas Wagner
Thomas Wagner
10 months ago

That howling noise you hear is the sound of liberals’ bluffs being called.

Thomas Wagner
Thomas Wagner
10 months ago

That howling noise you hear is the sound of liberals’ bluffs being called.

carl taylor
carl taylor
10 months ago

Adams latest wheeze, I heard, was for New Yorkers to offer up their spare rooms to migrants. I suspect this will go the same way as the Los Angeles plan for residents to build sheds to house the homeless in their own back gardens, ie nowhere.

Thomas Wagner
Thomas Wagner
10 months ago
Reply to  carl taylor

The problem is getting closer and closer to home, and New Yorkers are getting more and more skittish.

Thomas Wagner
Thomas Wagner
10 months ago
Reply to  carl taylor

The problem is getting closer and closer to home, and New Yorkers are getting more and more skittish.

carl taylor
carl taylor
10 months ago

Adams latest wheeze, I heard, was for New Yorkers to offer up their spare rooms to migrants. I suspect this will go the same way as the Los Angeles plan for residents to build sheds to house the homeless in their own back gardens, ie nowhere.

Jerry Carroll
Jerry Carroll
10 months ago

Delighted to see it happening. Bring ’em on, the more the merrier. New York and its Democrat voters deserve to get it good and hard.

Jerry Carroll
Jerry Carroll
10 months ago

Delighted to see it happening. Bring ’em on, the more the merrier. New York and its Democrat voters deserve to get it good and hard.

Nuala Rosher
Nuala Rosher
10 months ago

Migrants are sold the story of hotels and 3 meals a day. What they are not told is that if they are given asylum that will end and they will have to fend for themselves

Thomas Wagner
Thomas Wagner
10 months ago
Reply to  Nuala Rosher

Not, apparently, in New York City. NYC doesn’t need to create shelters as much as it needs to create jobs, which it apparently can’t do. Pity.

Thomas Wagner
Thomas Wagner
10 months ago
Reply to  Nuala Rosher

Not, apparently, in New York City. NYC doesn’t need to create shelters as much as it needs to create jobs, which it apparently can’t do. Pity.

Nuala Rosher
Nuala Rosher
10 months ago

Migrants are sold the story of hotels and 3 meals a day. What they are not told is that if they are given asylum that will end and they will have to fend for themselves

Su Mac
Su Mac
10 months ago

And so progresses the collapse of an empire before our very eyes. A cross between a basket case and a banana republic…a basket of bananas if you will

Su Mac
Su Mac
10 months ago

And so progresses the collapse of an empire before our very eyes. A cross between a basket case and a banana republic…a basket of bananas if you will