Adi Talwar
Katherin Burbano, 28, with her 2-year-old daughter. The family had a deadline to leave their hotel shelter in late January.
The legislation, introduced in Albany by Assemblywoman Catalina Cruz and State Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal, would prohibit policies that restrict the length of homeless shelter stays—aimed at halting the Adams administration’s 30 and 60-day shelter notices for newly arrived immigrants.
The city’s housing vacancy rate plunged to 1.41 percent in 2023, the lowest it has been since 1968, officials announced Thursday. Options were particularly scarce for low-income New Yorkers: just 0.39 percent of units renting for under $1,100 were available last year.
The arrest Tuesday of 70 NYCHA employees who allegedly pocketed bribes for steering small-dollar contracts is prompting calls to reform how the housing authority handles such work—what Congressman and former City Council public housing chair Ritchie Torres called ‘a breeding ground for corruption and influence peddling.’
In his annual address Wednesday, his third since taking office in 2022, Mayor Eric Adams touched on plans for a “Tenant Protection Cabinet,” developing affordable housing on two dozen city-owned sites, and issuing new NYCHA Section 8 vouchers. But several advocates said the speech fell short in addressing the city’s homelessness crisis.
While supporters say New York City’s right to counsel program needs additional funding to cover all the qualified tenants who need the legal help, they’ve also hailed it a success, and are now pushing to replicate it statewide.
Mientras que la administración de Eric Adams ha estado emitiendo plazos en refugios para inmigrantes adultos durante meses, y para algunas familias con niños en hoteles como parte de una iniciativa separada, los desalojos del martes fueron los primeros en aplicarse a familias con niños siguiendo la política de la alcaldía.
While the Adams administration has been issuing shelter deadlines to adult immigrants for months, and to some families with kids in hotels as part of a separate initiative, Tuesday’s evictions were the first to apply to families with children under City Hall’s broader policy, which officials say is an effort to manage more than 168,500 new arrivals since 2022—69,000 of whom remain in the city’s care.
Organizers with the One Fair Wage campaign say increasing pay rates for tipped workers across the state is especially pertinent given the recent arrival of thousands of new immigrants, many of whom have sought work in the restaurant industry. The campaign is pushing for Gov. Kathy Hochul to take up the cause this session in Albany.
“We have already witnessed the harm that 30-day limits have inflicted on adult migrants without children, who have either had to sleep on the streets indefinitely while reapplying for housing or who have been abandoned by the system altogether,” reads a letter signed by nearly 50 city and state elected officials.
The Fair Chance for Housing Act, passed by the City Council Wednesday, will limit the extent to which landlords, real estate brokers and other entities can factor in past convictions when considering a housing applicant—though the final bill is less expansive in banning the use of background checks than a version debated last year.
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