Mayor Eric Adams’ desperate scramble to find shelter space for endless waves of migrants has only one logical conclusion: Re-open the 42-year-old Callahan consent decree, which requires the city to immediately accommodate anyone who claims to be homeless.
Better: Ditch the decree entirely — and end the madness.
Adams seems to think if he just keeps finding new space, he can manage the problem.
Sorry: President Joe Biden has made clear he won’t close the border. Nor is Washington about to send anywhere close to enough resources to make a meaningful difference.
Hizzoner needs another way out. One answer: Repeat his “there’s no room at the inn” line — and mean it.
As Nicole Gelinas notes, “New York City is unique in the country, and indeed in the Western world, in that it guarantees all comers shelter: immediately, no questions asked.”
Time to lose the ironclad guarantee of shelter, at least for migrants.
After all, in accepting the decree the Koch administration (!) never imagined it’d apply to unlimited numbers of noncitizens.
Unconditionally. Forever.
The mayor’s turning over every rock to find housing: at ritzy hotels, school gyms, even space at the old Police Academy building in Manhattan.
He’s sought to dump migrants on counties outside the city.
He’s made stiff budget sacrifices to free up funds for the illegal border-crossers.
The cost is simply too high.
And, by the way, one reason the migrants keep coming here is they know they’ll get free accommodations, thanks to Callahan.
At the least, restrict shelter eligibility to actual New Yorkers — people who’ve lived here for some time, not those who arrive on a bus a week after crossing the border.
The city needn’t deny them other services — food, medical care, etc. But something’s got to give.
Sure, any meaningful change will invite a legal challenge from the fantasy-land left.
Yet at some point, every last bit of space will be gone, along with funds beyond what the city needs to function.
Adams has already tinkered with some shelter policies, suspending rules for granting families private rooms and placing them in shelters by 4 a.m. if they arrive at an intake facility by 10 p.m.
It’s a start.
Frankly, the 1981 decree should’ve died long ago.
But this new nightmare makes the case undeniable.
The Constitution, Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson famously observed, is not a “suicide pact.”
The same applies to New York law: Callahan can go, and it must.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
