No room at the inn? As holidays approach, migrants face eviction from New York City shelters

NEW YORK — It could be a cold and bleak New Year for thousands of migrant families living in New York City’s emergency shelter system. With the arrival of winter, they are told they must leave, with no guarantee that they will be given a bed elsewhere.

Homeless immigrants and their children were limited to 60 days in city housing under an order issued in October by Mayor Eric Adams, a move the Democrat says is necessary to relieve a shelter system overwhelmed by asylum seekers crossing the southern border of the United States.

That time is now ticking for people like Karina Obando, a 38-year-old Ecuadorian mother who has been given until January 5 to leave the old hotel where she is staying with her two young children.

It’s unclear where he’ll end up next. After that date, you will be able to reapply for admission to the shelter system. Placement may not take place immediately. Her family could end up being sent to one of the city’s huge tents, far from where her 11-year-old son goes to school.

“I told my son: ‘Take advantage. Enjoy the hotel because now we have a roof,’” Obando said in Spanish outside Row NYC, a towering 1,300-room hotel that the city converted into a shelter for immigrants in the heart of the theater district. “Because they are going to kick us out and we are going to be sleeping on the train or on the street.”

A handful of cities across the United States facing an influx of homeless immigrants have imposed their own limits on shelter stays, citing a variety of reasons, including rising costs, lack of space and a desire to pressure people to find housing on their own, or leave the city completely.

Chicago imposed a 60-day housing limit last month and is set to begin evicting people in early January. In Massachusetts, Democratic Governor Maura Healey has limited the number of immigrant families in emergency shelters to 7,500.

Denver had limited immigrant families to 37 days, but suspended the policy this month in recognition of the onset of winter. Single adults are limited to 14 days.

In New York, the first families were expected to reach their 60-day limit a few days after Christmas, but the mayor’s office said those immigrants will receive extensions until early January. Notices have been issued to about 3,500 families so far.

Unlike most other large cities, New York has a “right to housing” that has existed for decades and requires the city to provide emergency housing to anyone who requests it.

But officials have warned migrants that there is no guarantee they will stay in the same hotel or the same district of the city.

Adult immigrants without children are already subject to a shorter shelter stay limit: 30 days.

Those who are expelled and still want help are told to head to the city’s so-called “reticketing center” that opened in late October in a former Catholic school in Manhattan’s East Village.

Dozens of men and women, many with their luggage and other belongings in tow, line up each morning in freezing weather to request a new stay.

They are offered a free one-way ticket to anywhere in the world. Most people refuse.

Some manage to get another shelter for 30 days, but many others say they leave empty-handed and must wait in line again the next day to try their luck.

“I’m afraid of dying sleeping on the street,” said Bárbara Coromoto Monzón Peña, a 22-year-old Venezuelan, as she spent her second day waiting in line on a recent weekday.

Obando said his oldest son, who is 19, hasn’t been able to find a place to rent since he and his wife used up their 30-day allowance at the Row NYC hotel.

“As a mother, it hurts,” she said, breaking down into tears. “She is sleeping on the train, on the street, in the cold. She is suffering a lot and now it is our turn. “They told me that this country was different, but for me it has been hell.”

Adams has insisted that the city is doing far more for immigrant families than almost anywhere else. New York is on track to spend billions of dollars opening shelters, paying for hotel rooms, buying meals and offering assistance in overcoming bureaucratic hurdles for asylum seekers.

The mayor has also repeatedly warned that the city’s resources are being stretched, with more than 67,200 migrants still in its care and many more arriving each week.

“We are doing everything in our power to treat the families as humanely as possible,” said Kayla Mamelak, a spokeswoman for Adams. “We’ve used every corner of New York City possible and simply ran out of good options.”

He stressed that the administration intends to prevent families from sleeping on the streets and said that there will be an orderly process for them to request another 60-day stay.

Immigrant advocates say the end result will continue to uproot vulnerable families during the coldest months of the year and disrupt schooling for new students who are just settling into their classes.

“It may be the Grinchiest move ever,” said Liza Schwartzwald, director of the New York Immigrant Coalition. “Sending families with children outside like the middle of winter, right after the Christmas season, is just cruel.”

Adams has emphasized that immigrant children will not be required to change schools when they move. But some children could face epic displacements if they are placed in new shelters far from their current schools.

Immigrant parents say two months simply isn’t enough time to find a job, get the kids into daycare or school and save enough for rent.

Obando, who arrived in the United States three months ago, said that outside of some cleaning work, she has had difficulty finding steady work because there is no one to care for her 3-year-old daughter while her husband remains detained at the border. in Arizona.

“It’s not that we Ecuadorians are coming to take away your jobs or that we are lazy,” he said. “We are good workers. “More time, that’s all we ask.”

For Ana Vásquez, a 22-year-old Venezuelan who is eight months pregnant, the situation is more urgent.

Her baby is due at the end of December, but she has until January 8 to leave Row NYC, where she has been staying with her sister and two young nieces for the past four months.

“They’re going to leave me outside,” Vásquez lamented in Spanish one cold morning this month outside the hotel. “We don’t have an escape plan. The situation is difficult, even more so with the baby.”

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Associated Press writer Liset Cruz contributed to this report.

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Follow Philip Marcelo at twitter.com/philmarcelo.