Adult asylum-seekers without children in NYC shelters will get 60-day notices to find alternative housing, Mayor Eric Adams says

Adult asylum-seekers without children in New York City shelters will get 60-day notices to find alternative housing, amid a migrant crisis that has brought more than 90,000 to the city since last spring, Mayor Eric Adams said on Wednesday.

In the next few days, the city will start handing out the notices and providing intensified casework services to help those asylum-seekers to find other housing options. People who can’t find alternative housing could reapply for a new placement at an intake center. And if accommodations are available, officials say, they may be placed somewhere else.

“We must now take additional steps to create urgently needed space for families with children who continue to arrive seeking asylum and help those with us take the next steps to their journey,” Adams said at a City Hall news conference.

Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services Anne Williams-Isom said in a statement that the city will continue to help people find shelter when they first arrive in New York City. But, she said: “We must then work together with partners at all levels of government to find options for where people will settle in order to continue relieving the pressure on New York City.”

The policy change comes as New York City faces a continued influx of asylum-seeking migrants. The city has opened 188 sites, including 13 humanitarian centers, and today cares for more than 54,000 asylum-seekers, officials said. Adams has estimated the cost to the city to pay for food, shelter and other expenses for the migrants to exceed $4.3 billion by next summer.

Newsday reported last month that very few of the migrants are likely to be granted asylum, but an unknown number will stay in the United States illegally anyway.

New York City is under a decades-old, rare-in-the-nation judicial mandate to provide shelter to anyone who seeks it. The city and advocates for the mandate were in court Wednesday, where a judge is considering whether to grant a request by Adams' lawyers to loosen the mandate.

On Wednesday, Adams again pressed for more help from the federal government, including reimbursement. He also announced that the city will distribute flyers at the border in an effort to communicate its sense of the truth of the situation in New York.

Based on the description by Adams and Williams-Isom, the 60-day policy appears to apply only to the population that arrived as asylum-seekers, not the traditional homeless population. Adams spokeswoman Kate Smart confirmed that the policy applies only to this immigrant population.

Before the mayor’s news conference, the Legal Aid Society and the Coalition for the Homeless released a joint statement Wednesday that said the city should implement policies to address shelter capacity instead of attempting to limit shelter stays.

With Matthew Chayes

By Tiffany Cusaac-Smith

tiffany.cusaac-smith@newsday.com@T_Cusaac

Education: Howard University 

Tiffany Cusaac-Smith came to Newsday in 2023 after being a race and history reporter at USA TODAY, where she wrote enterprise and spot articles examining how the past shapes the present. Previously, she worked as the race and justice reporter at the USA TODAY Network of New York, covering issues such as criminal justice reform, housing, environmental justice, health care and politics. At The Journal News/lohud.com in Westchester County, she covered Yonkers, the state's third-largest city. She also worked at The Associated Press in Atlanta.

Honors and Awards: Criminal justice reporting fellowship with the National Press Foundation;  New York News Publishers Association award for distinguished investigative reporting;  Contributed reporting for Best of Gannett honor; Member of Table Stakes, a program funded by the Knight-Lenfest Local News Transformation Fund and managed by the American Press Institute to transform local news.