Mayor Eric Adams of New York City and his staff have set up many shelters around the city to house travelers. The Democrat thinks they have to do it because of a “right to shelter” law that dates back decades. A judge on Staten Island didn’t agree and told the city to close down one of the most controversial shelters.
Judge Wayne Ozzi said on September 26 that the city did not have permission to use the old St. John Villa Academy as a shelter. People from the Staten Island neighborhood had come out before to protest its location. They brought signs that said the city should shut it down. People were unhappy with the school because there were other schools nearby.
Fox News said that Republican Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella was one of the people who sued the city to get it to shut down. He praised Ozzi’s decision and said that they think Adams’ government did something wrong when it put a shelter in “a low-density residential community and across the street from a Pre-K–12 school.”
Ozzi said the city was wrong to use the right-to-shelter rule to open homeless shelters for migrants without going through the right channels. He said that the whole state of New York would be giving those shelters if it were written into the state’s constitution. That’s not true, though.
The 40-year-old right-to-shelter rule is being looked at again by the courts by other city officials who say it only applies to New Yorkers and not migrants. The time that migrants can stay in a shelter will also be shortened from 60 days to 30 days by Adams’ government.
In one case, Adams is fighting against the right-to-shelter law. In the other case, his administration is going to appeal Ozzi’s ruling. The mayor has already said that the city can’t take any more migrants, and he has asked the central government for help again.
