New York City electeds and advocates gathered last week to protest Mayor Eric Adams’s 30/60-day shelter eviction notices, which are likely to affect housing-insecure school-aged children from migrant families as the city heads into another school year.
Adams enacted the shelter limit policy last year in an effort to stem the influx of asylum seekers and migrants needing sanctuary in the city. The rule initially focused on evicting adult men and exempted migrant families in shelters. The controversial move drew swift backlash from electeds, advocates, and the City Council, many of whom testified in a December 2023 hearing that migrant students missed school and had to transfer to different schools with long and complicated commutes, all while watching their families destabilize once eviction notices went out.
According to advocates, a total of 12,689 families with children have been given 60-day notices, including 18,348 children under 18, as of this August.
Last week’s press conference included City Comptroller Brad Lander; Public Advocate Jumaane Williams; and Councilmembers Carmen De La Rosa, Shahana Hanif, Alexa Avilés, and Gale Brewer, as well as organizations including Mixteca, NYIC, 1199SEIU, United Federation of Teachers (UFT), Advocates for Children, Alliance for Quality Education (AQE), African Communities Together, Housing Works, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, NYLAG, and VOCAL NY. They gathered at the Audubon Playground in Washington Heights, near P.S. 513 Castle Bridge School, where 16 families reportedly received 60-day notices.
“A day before the school year begins, students are still being shuffled around the city,” Williams said in a statement. “This shelter eviction policy means that we are rescinding the right to shelter every 30 and 60 days, displacing and uprooting children in dire need of stability. This makes it impossible to build community or a life. Students need as much stability and support as our city can provide.”
The expansion of this policy as the school year begins will force more students to move between schools and shelters multiple times in an academic year, leading to severe disruptions to the education of newly arrived students, said advocates.
Brewer said her office has triaged dozens of cases of families being moved from the West Side to Queens or Brooklyn despite being enrolled in District 3 schools in Manhattan. She added that families were not given MetroCards and school buses don’t show up.
“The shelter stay limits unnecessarily implemented by the Adams administration cause undue stress on our education system, agencies, and families seeking stability in our city,” De La Rosa said. “It is unrealistic to evict families every two months when finding stable housing and employment in a complicated system is challenging. Stories of immigrant families following the American dream to provide a better life for their children are common in communities like mine in Washington Heights.”
De La Rosa added that, “In a city and country with abundance, we cannot close the door to those seeking to do the same today. Migrant families need relief, not housing instability and additional trauma, as the new school year begins.”
In an attempt to legislate against Adams’s shelter eviction policies, Hanif introduced Bill 210, which prohibits the city’s Department of Social Services (DSS) or any city agency from mandating “length of shelter stay” restrictions.
Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal and Assemblymember Catalina Cruz introduced Bills S.8493 / A9129, which similarly bans Adams from implementing caps on shelter stays in homeless shelters and emergency congregate housing for asylum seekers.
“Mayor Adams’s decision to extend the 60-day shelter stay limit to families with children in DHS shelters is exacerbating an already untenable situation,” Hanif said. “This policy will force students to move between schools and shelters up to five times in a single academic year. Our children should be concentrating on their studies, not on where they will sleep each night or whether they can stay in their current school. I urge the administration to put an end to shelter evictions once and for all.”
According to AQE Co Executive Director Zakiyah Shaakir-Ansari in a statement, “Mayor Adams’s policy of uprooting families every 30–60 days not only disrupts the lives of children and communities but undermines the very foundation of their education. Blaming others while continually displacing families is not leadership; it’s a failure to protect our most vulnerable. As the new school year begins, the Mayor must stop playing politics with children’s lives and provide the housing stability that every child, student, and New Yorker needs to thrive.”