New York City Homeless Bill Becomes Law

New York City has passed a homeless bill of rights, giving legal protection and rights to the unhoused. The law allows sleeping outdoors in public spaces, complain about shelter conditions, apply for rental assistance, and ensures proper accommodation for gender identity. However, the city's shelter system is overwhelmed due to an influx of migrants, and the mayor has asked to suspend the obligation to provide housing for those in need. Advocates for the homeless are critical of the mayor's approach. Homelessness levels in the city are at a high since the Great Depression. The bill aims to change the perception of homelessness and promote empathy. Hello and welcome to this episode of the diary of a lawyer and today I want to briefly talk about the New York City homeless bill of rights that has come into law. Mayor Eric Adams allowed a homeless bill of rights to become law over the last weekend. A step which supporters say will strengthen legal protection for the unhoused in a city struggling with a record number of people in its shelter system. The measure passed the city council with bipartisan support in April as city shelters were swelled beyond capacity by the arrival of 70,000 international migrants since last spring. Now among other things the new law acknowledges the explicit right to sleep outdoors in public spaces though not any place they like. New York City has other laws in place that could limit where outside the unhoused can sleep. Police can't clear sidewalks and streets of anyone who impedes the flow of traffic. City parks close at 1am and people can't generally sleep when in private or in public. The law also gives people the right to complain about shelter accommodations without repercussions and includes safeguards to prevent a person being assigned to spaces that don't correspond to their gender identity. It also gives people the right to apply for rental assistance and requires parents paying shelter to be given diapers for their babies. The main sponsor of the homeless bill of rights, New York City's elected public advocate, Jermaine Williams, said the measure was necessary to let people in the shelter system know they are entitled to fair and respectful treatment. Now the new law also reiterates that New Yorkers have a right to shelter, a mandate in place since 1981 when a court ordered the city to provide temporary housing to anyone who asks for it. Now meeting that obligation has been an enormous struggle for New York City as the shelter system is being overtaxed by migrants who have streamed across the US southern border over the past year. The city's Department of Homeless Services is currently sheltering some 81,000 people, not including thousands of homes housed by other agencies, such as those escaping domestic violence. Now to make more room, the city has rented out entire hotels and found temporary accommodations in nearby counties. Adam, the mayor, who is a democrat, also recently asked the judge to temporarily remove the city of a decades-old court-imposed legal obligation to provide shelter for anyone who needs it. The mayor said the city wasn't seeking to end New York's unique right to shelter, only suspension of the obligation to provide housing during times when its shelter system is overwhelmed. Now that proposed relaxation of the shelter rules drew protests from advocates for homeless people, including Williams, who said it could lead to more people sleeping outside. In meeting this moment and its very real urgency and scope, we should not be focusing on efforts to remove the rights of the most marginalized, said Williams in a statement last week. Now advocates for the homeless have been critical of the mayor's approach to homelessness, which has theoretically included sweeps of outdoor encampments and subway spaces. And that sort of is, in a nutshell, around the homelessness law that became billed, that became law several days ago. Now it's important to note that homelessness in New York City has hit levels that haven't been since the Great Depression. The advocacy group, the Coalition for the Homeless, says that as of March, there are more than 75 people sleeping in city shelters each night, which includes thousands of children. And recent migrants to the U.S. are also among those without stable housing. And so the homeless bill that is now in effect in the city explicitly acknowledges the right to sleep outdoors with some limitations and the right to apply for rental aid, but also gives the right to complain about shelter conditions. And so Mayor Adams allowed this bill into good law. He didn't veto it, but he was also challenging the New York City's right to shelter law, which required the city to provide shelter to anyone who requested it. And this is coming in light of the influx of people who are unhoused, asylum seekers who are in New York. Now I think the question is, the discussion has had, is this a contradiction? Now according to Williams, she says, the number of decisions that the mayor is making that I think, according to Williams, are not helpful for the asylum seekers or for New Yorkers who have been homeless. Williams goes on to say that they need to remind folks that the day before the first asylum seeker basked in New York City, there were around over 50,000 New Yorkers already in the shelter, and a lot of them working, a lot of them children, a lot of them families. And they had dealt with the situation then, but which was not as acute as now. She goes on to say that she already said that the mayor is correct, but they're not getting the assistance and help they need from the federal government at all. And they believe that the mayor is wrong in some of the things that they're doing. And the challenge in the right to shelter is one of the things that they vehemently disagree. The question then is put is, well, how do you change the fear that some New Yorkers have, which is they have somebody sleeping outside and instead of feeling sympathy, they feel safe for themselves and they accept it. How does one change that? And how do people say, what do people say about such people in this Bill of Rights? Now Williams, who is the public advocate, explains that they have leaders at the moment that are doing the tried and true method of stopping fear to elevate themselves in power, which she says has dangerous consequences. And that across the country, people are using fear and comfortability, which resonates, of course, in the situation in New York. And so she says they want to see leaders changing the rhetoric and having discussion. And they're hoping that the Bill of Rights can do, be part of that change so people can recognize the humanity in Jordan Neely and can recognize the humanity of people who are in the house and who are homeless. Jordan Neely, recently, this is the young man, the artist, who lost his life on the subway in a chock hold. And the killer has since been charged. And that's a different case. And so that is it in a nutshell regarding the new homeless bill that became law. And we shall as always watch developments. And thanks for listening. See you again. Thank you. And I'll see you next time.