Latest WSZIO Column in The Bronx Times:
The migrant deluge in addition to our already burgeoning homeless population (60,000+) has brought NYC to the brink of disaster. This has been discussed in the news and in local political contests incessantly, but there is much confusion and misinformation about these terms being thrown around in the media.
What does it mean that NYC is a “right to shelter” city?
From Wikipedia: Callahan v. Carey was a landmark case in the New York County Supreme Court that established the duty of New York State to provide shelter for homeless men. It was brought in 1979 as a class action suit, the first such suit by advocates for the homeless in the United States, and settled with the negotiation in 1981 of a consent decree governing the provision of homeless shelters by New York City.
New York City is the only large city that MUST provide almost immediate shelter for ALL homeless people no matter who they are or where they come from or face legal consequences and fines. This situation was bad enough in prior years due to foolish and short-sighted policies about housing and the focus on building luxury housing almost exclusively. In 2010 when WSZIO was focused on preventing a homeless shelter on St Peter’s Avenue I did a lot of research about this. This decree (which originally applied only to homeless men but then was extended to include women and families) seemed to me at the time to be a ticking time bomb that could go off at any time leaving the city bankrupt. This legal circumstance did not go unnoticed by the governors of Texas and Florida, who realized that NYC, like that character in the musical Oklahoma, is the only city in the country who “can’t say no”, and so they sent and are sending thousands of migrants up from the borders to us on busses every day. This cannot go on, and for years I had been writing about this and talking with our then elected officials in revisiting this consent decree before it blew up in our faces, which it did.
What is a sanctuary city?
There’s no official legal definition for sanctuary city and what it means varies significantly from place to place. Generally speaking, local law enforcement in sanctuary cities or counties don’t ask or report the immigration status of people they come into contact with. A sanctuary jurisdiction typically refuses requests from federal immigration authorities to detain undocumented immigrants apprehended for low-level offenses. A sanctuary city would also refuse to have its local law enforcement "deputized" as federal immigration agents. https://fclawlib.libguides.com/immigrationlaw/sanctuary
There are sanctuary cities in several states, including California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington.
As you can see, our woes stem, not from being a sanctuary city, but from the consent decree. And now our mayor is desperately trying to put up shelters and house thousands of migrants and homeless any place he can, even going so far as to suggest basement apartments, backyard buildings, and other dangerous practices that we had hoped went out after Jacob Riis published How the Other Half Lives in the 1890s. We cannot and MUST not go back to that, this hysteria notwithstanding.
Adams is in over his head, as indeed any other mayor would be given the flood of migrants and the draconian legal constraints of the consent decree. There is no other way, no matter what the Coalition for the Homeless and the NYCLU say, but to gut Callhan vs Carey and get rid of or modify the consent decree. This is an impossible burden for ANY city to have to bear alone.
I would strongly ask our elected officials, whether re-elected or newly elected, to work with the legislature to amend or eliminate the Callahan vs Cary decree. This MUST be done for NYC to survive this financial and housing onslaught.
What does it mean that NYC is a “right to shelter” city?
From Wikipedia: Callahan v. Carey was a landmark case in the New York County Supreme Court that established the duty of New York State to provide shelter for homeless men. It was brought in 1979 as a class action suit, the first such suit by advocates for the homeless in the United States, and settled with the negotiation in 1981 of a consent decree governing the provision of homeless shelters by New York City.
New York City is the only large city that MUST provide almost immediate shelter for ALL homeless people no matter who they are or where they come from or face legal consequences and fines. This situation was bad enough in prior years due to foolish and short-sighted policies about housing and the focus on building luxury housing almost exclusively. In 2010 when WSZIO was focused on preventing a homeless shelter on St Peter’s Avenue I did a lot of research about this. This decree (which originally applied only to homeless men but then was extended to include women and families) seemed to me at the time to be a ticking time bomb that could go off at any time leaving the city bankrupt. This legal circumstance did not go unnoticed by the governors of Texas and Florida, who realized that NYC, like that character in the musical Oklahoma, is the only city in the country who “can’t say no”, and so they sent and are sending thousands of migrants up from the borders to us on busses every day. This cannot go on, and for years I had been writing about this and talking with our then elected officials in revisiting this consent decree before it blew up in our faces, which it did.
What is a sanctuary city?
There’s no official legal definition for sanctuary city and what it means varies significantly from place to place. Generally speaking, local law enforcement in sanctuary cities or counties don’t ask or report the immigration status of people they come into contact with. A sanctuary jurisdiction typically refuses requests from federal immigration authorities to detain undocumented immigrants apprehended for low-level offenses. A sanctuary city would also refuse to have its local law enforcement "deputized" as federal immigration agents. https://fclawlib.libguides.com/immigrationlaw/sanctuary
There are sanctuary cities in several states, including California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington.
As you can see, our woes stem, not from being a sanctuary city, but from the consent decree. And now our mayor is desperately trying to put up shelters and house thousands of migrants and homeless any place he can, even going so far as to suggest basement apartments, backyard buildings, and other dangerous practices that we had hoped went out after Jacob Riis published How the Other Half Lives in the 1890s. We cannot and MUST not go back to that, this hysteria notwithstanding.
Adams is in over his head, as indeed any other mayor would be given the flood of migrants and the draconian legal constraints of the consent decree. There is no other way, no matter what the Coalition for the Homeless and the NYCLU say, but to gut Callhan vs Carey and get rid of or modify the consent decree. This is an impossible burden for ANY city to have to bear alone.
I would strongly ask our elected officials, whether re-elected or newly elected, to work with the legislature to amend or eliminate the Callahan vs Cary decree. This MUST be done for NYC to survive this financial and housing onslaught.
