NYC to impose 60-day shelter stay limit for adult migrants as crisis continues: Mayor Adams

Adult migrants arriving in the Big Apple will now only be allowed to stay in city-run shelters for 60 days, Mayor Eric Adams said Wednesday — as the city continues to struggle with the sheer number of asylum seekers flooding in.

Adams said officials will start alerting adult migrants currently in the city’s care of the new rule within the coming days.

The new shelter stay restriction won’t apply to migrant families with children, he added.

“I have taken extraordinary measures to shelter and care for asylum seekers. We must now take additional steps to create urgently needed space for families with children who continue to arrive,” Adams said as he announced the new limit.

“We will do this by giving 60 days’ notice to adult asylum seekers already in our care to find alternative housing.

“We will start this in the coming days with asylum seekers in humanitarian relief centers who have been in our care for significant amounts of time.”

Under the new restriction, migrants unable to find alternate accommodation by the end of their 60-day stay will then have to reapply for a new placement at the city’s asylum seeker arrival center.

The mayor insisted the goal wasn’t to force migrants out of shelters and onto the streets, saying each migrant given notice will have multiple touch points with case workers to discuss their options and plan for the next steps.

“With more than 54,800 asylum seekers still currently in our care, this effort will intensify adult asylum seekers’ casework services over the next two months to help them take the next step on their journey and ensure we have a bed to place children and families at night,” Adams said.

The mayor’s announcement came as roughly 2,800 migrants arrived in the Big Apple last week — adding to the more than 90,000 that have poured in since April last year.

More than 54,800 asylum seekers are currently staying at one of the city’s 188 emergency shelter sites set up to cater for the migrant influx.

“We cannot continue to absorb tens of thousands of newcomers,” Adams said, adding the new limit was one of the “difficult choices” the city has been forced to make in order to cater to the relentless influx.

“We’re not going to pretend this is sustainable. It’s wrong that New York City is carrying the weight of a national problem.”

News of the new shelter limit came as city lawyers went before a Manhattan Supreme Court judge later Wednesday amid Adams’ push to suspend the decades-old “right to shelter” mandate amid the ongoing migrant crisis.

The Adams administration submitted an application in May to modify the regulation – which essentially requires the city to provide a bed for anyone who requests one — because the surge of migrants had placed “unprecedented demands” on resources.

But Legal Aid challenged the push to nix the mandate, arguing in part that it would only result in more people sleeping on the streets.

Judge Erika Edwards told the hearing that both the administration and Legal Aid were currently in the process of trying to negotiate an agreement.

“The parties have been working extremely hard to try to resolve these issues without requiring any motion or my involvement,” Edwards said.

Reps for Legal Aid said they’ve only ever “wanted to try to resolve this.”  

“If it’s not resolved, then we’ll have to come back to the judge and then the judge will have to make a decision,” Legal Aid lawyer, Joshua Goldfein said outside court.

Steve Banks, the former Department of Social Services comish and now special counsel at the Paul, Weiss firm, added: “The bottom line here is that the right to shelter in New York has protected thousands of people. And it’s in nobody’s interest, to undo that basic protection, have more people end up on the streets.”

Both sides are set to return to court on Aug. 16.

The city’s lawyers didn’t immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.