City officials trumpeted a court settlement with homeless rights advocates in March that allowed them to curtail some of the city’s long-standing right-to- shelter protections, allowing them to turn most adult migrants away after 30 days unless there was an “extenuating circ*mstance.”
But a month after the new rules went into effect, thousands of adult migrants have received more time in city shelters thanks to little-known state regulations that have once again blunted the impact of the city’s increasingly harsh migrant policies, which advocates had feared would lead to a dramatic surge in street homelessness.
The majority of people who have applied for extensions under the city’s new policy have received them based on PRUCOL status, short for Permanently Residing Under the Color of Law, which entitles them to receive state public benefits like temporary housing assistance.
Of the 9,313 requests for extensions the city received during the first month that the new rules were in effect, 5,395, or 57%, were granted extensions because they have applied for either asylum or temporary protected status (TPS), according to data provided by City Hall.
“We will continue to provide legally-mandated benefits to those who are permanently residing under the color of the law, and we are working closely with The Legal Aid Society to implement a more efficient screening process and eligibility program,” said mayoral spokesperson Kayla Mamelak. She added that the city encourages migrants living in shelters to apply for asylum and TPS and has helped 55,000 people do so.
There are some indicators that the shelter acceptance rate is ticking up under the new rules as awareness of them spreads. According to two sources familiar with the matter, about three quarters of people who’ve shown up seeking extensions in recent days at the city’s St. Brigid reticketing site in the East Village received one because of their PROCUL status.
Joshua Goldfein, an attorney with Legal Aid, said his office had sent out an email blast to providers who work with migrants advising them that applying for asylum or TPS — currently limited to certain nationals from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua,Venezuela Honduras, Nepal, and Sudan — would help people secure another shelter stint.
“We’ve seen that a significant number of people have received a placement based on they’re having filed their [asylum] applications,” he said.
‘Sleep in the Street Like a Dog’
The importance of having applied for asylum in securing another shelter spot has been largely unclear to many people navigating the process, up until the moment they’re seeking another cot.
Some of those who haven’t submitted their paperwork have been thrust into a shelterless limbo, like 31-year-old Darwin, a migrant from Venezuela who spent five nights in early June sleeping on the sidewalk outside his old Brooklyn shelter in a lean-to he’d constructed out of a defunct Citi Bike, black plastic trash bags and a discarded couch cushion.
“I never imagined coming to this country and sleeping in the street,” he said in Spanish on a recent morning. He asked that his last name not be used for fear of negative consequences as he seeks housing and legal immigration status.
Darwin said he’d been asking for an appointment at the city’s asylum seeker application center for weeks, but didn’t manage to secure one until a few days before the end of his shelter stay. He hadn’t been able to finish his asylum application in that visit because there wasn’t an adequate translator, and he had to reschedule for the week after his time in shelter expired.
Darwin said he had no idea when his 30 days ran out, or that not having submitted his asylum application would play such a key part in why he was denied shelter. (Since Darwin arrived in the U.S. after July 31 of last year, he, like many other more recent arrivals, is not eligible for Temporary Protected Status.) He was turned away from the reticketing center on June 2 and again two days later, when he received a formal letter saying he hadn’t made significant efforts to move out of shelter.
“It was raining but I didn’t want to go to the subway — a lot of crazy people there smoking drugs and fighting. So I stayed on the pavement. I got wet,” he said. “For now it’s the pavement. Sleep in the street like a dog.”
He spoke to THE CITY over the course of three days as he tried to submit his asylum application, returning to the sidewalk outside his old shelter in the afternoon to offer haircuts and shaves at $10 a pop before bedding in his hovel nearby. When he finally managed to submit an asylum claim on June 6, he returned to the reticketing center the next morning and got a 30-day extension with ease.
“They could tell you at the beginning, ‘Listen, if you want to stay in shelter, you have to find a way to do your [asylum] papers as fast as possible.’ At least you’d understand and be aware,” he said.
While the city provides access to overnight waiting rooms to those who have nowhere else to go, Darwin said he opted for the street because he’d heard rumors that people’s cell phones got stolen inside.
According to the terms of the March settlement, the city’s two waiting rooms now offer showers and regular meals, a significant improvement from the winter when they provided neither regularly. People who have stayed there more recently say they still don’t have cots and must try to sleep on the floor or in chairs.
Reimel Gomez, a 24-year-old migrant, said he spent 10 nights sleeping in overnight waiting rooms while trying to submit his asylum application.
“They denied me. So I came back and they denied me again,” he said in Spanish, adding that no one told him about the new conditional shelter system during the month he spent living on Randall’s Island. He added that he only heard that applying for asylum, or taking an English or a job training class, could help him get more time when he’d been evicted from the city shelter and visited the reticketing center.
“The thing I could do fastest was apply for asylum, so I applied,” he said.
He finally got an appointment at the city’s asylum application help center on his 10th day, and got an 30-day extension at the reticketing site a day later.
“I give a lot of thanks to the government,” he said. “I came here and I don’t have anyone. And now I have a place to sleep, and some food. It’s not much but it’s something.”
20 Points for 30 More Days
Just over 1,000 people have separately asked for extensions based on the “extenuating circ*mstances” — like recovering from a medical procedure, an imminent immigration court date or making a “significant effort” to move out of shelter — hammered out in the months-long legal battle between homeless rights advocates and city lawyers.
Of the 1,009 requests for extensions based on extenuating circ*mstances, 393 were approved while 706 were denied, according to figures provided by City Hall for between May 15, when the new system started, and June 12. Those numbers, however, appear to include duplicates, meaning someone could have applied multiple times and ultimately gotten an approval.
Goldfein with Legal Aid said the city has been deploying a type of point system, where an applicant has to earn around 20 points to secure a 30-day extension.
Items that help secure points include attending a job training, applying for health benefits, following shelter rules, attending a meeting with a caseworker, looking for a job and taking an English class, among others. Trying to do each of these things is worth one point while succeeding is worth five, Goldfein said.
A spokesperson for the Adams administration said the points system is a helpful tool for case evaluators, but is not the sole determining factor for whether or not an extension is granted.
Goldfein said Legal Aid has clients who seemed to have cleared the 20-point threshold but were still turned away.
“We are speaking to people every day who were inappropriately denied an extension despite showing that they did everything they could to move out,” he said, adding that Legal Aid would “pursue every available remedy” if the city didn’t change course.
