Since last spring, more than 100,000 asylum seekers have come to New York. Many lack ties in the city and have sought housing in the city’s homeless shelter system, compounding the city’s existing shelter shortage. We are told the influx of new immigrants is an unprecedented crisis. It is not. It is a challenge our city has faced & met before – at a time when it had far fewer resources to meet this challenge. NYC is currently receiving 10,000 immigrants per month. In the early 20th Century, NYC received 10,000 immigrants per day. Many of those thousands arriving daily were Jews.
For over a year, everyday New Yorkers and some key allies in elected office have been rising to meet this challenge, organizing democratically where our city and state government have failed and where right-wing pockets of our city have actively sought to do harm. New Yorkers have: opened up their homes; connected asylum seekers with legal assistance; welcomed every single bus that has pulled up at Penn Station; and set up mutual aid groups and free stores to provide urgently needed clothing and items to people who arrive with nothing but the clothes on their backs.
New Yorkers continue to organize patchwork systems to provide services to new and longtime New Yorkers alike. But individuals and faith communities cannot do it alone, and our city, state, and federal governments can and must do more.
Our elected leaders have failed to meet the needs of asylum seekers, and the city’s response to the influx of asylum-seekers has been fragmented and reactive as the shelter system has become more strained. New York City has a mandate that it must provide shelter to anyone who needs it — a policy that Mayor Adams has tried to weaken through legal and strategic measures. The Mayor, Governor, and President are mostly engaged in finger-pointing and deflection, and Mayor Adams has consistently resorted to fear-mongering. Our city has no clear plan for how we will permanently house those living on the streets and in shelters, even as more and more new New Yorkers arrive each day.
New York City wouldn’t be New York City without immigrants or without the robust social services and housing programs that made it possible for us and our ancestors to build a future here. New York City wouldn’t be the city with the largest Jewish population in the world without fierce advocacy against anti-immigrant hate and nativist policies specifically developed to keep Jews and Asian people out of the United States.
We know that housing is a basic human right, but too many New Yorkers live without affordable, safe and decent homes. Thanks to a system that favors the real estate lobby and big corporate landlords over tenants and homeless New Yorkers, we are facing a historic housing crisis. Rents, evictions, and homelessness are at their highest rates in decades. It is unconscionable that in one of the wealthiest cities in the county, we have so many hundreds of New Yorkers without a home.
Protecting the right to shelter and fast tracking work permits are important campaigns, AND deeply investing in a housing system that guarantees permanent and affordable housing for asylum seekers and for all New Yorkers is the bold solution most needed.