(UnitedVoice.com) – New York City Mayor Eric Adams and his administration have created multiple shelters around the city to house migrants. The Democrat believes a decades-old “right to shelter” legal agreement requires them to do so. A Staten Island judge disagreed and ordered the city to shut down one of the most controversial shelters.
On September 26, Justice Wayne Ozzi ruled the city did not have the right to use the former St. John Villa Academy as a shelter. Residents of the Staten Island neighborhood had previously turned out to protest its presence. They carried posters with messages demanding the city shut it down. One of the complaints was that there were other schools in the neighborhood.
Fox News reported Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella, a Republican, was one of the residents to file suit against the city to have it shut down. He applauded Ozzi’s ruling, saying they believe Adams’ administration didn’t act properly when it put a shelter in “a low-density residential community and across the street from a Pre-K-12 school.”
Ozzi contended the city was wrong when it used the right-to-shelter law to bypass proper channels to open homeless shelters for migrants. He said that if it were a law that existed in the New York Constitution, then the entire state would be providing those shelters. But that isn’t the case.
Other city officials have asked the courts to reexamine the 40-year-old right-to-shelter law, saying it only applies to New Yorkers, not migrants. Adams’ administration is also looking to limit the amount of time migrants can stay in a shelter, reducing it from 60 days to 30 days.
While Adams fights against the right-to-shelter law in one case, his administration plans to appeal Ozzi’s decision in the other case. The mayor has previously said there’s no more room in the city for any more migrants and has once again asked for help from the federal government.
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