This past week, our administration announced that the City of New York has come to an agreement with the Legal Aid Society and the court to provide the city with additional flexibility under the 1981 consent decree in Callahan vs. Carey.
This new agreement addresses the city’s “Right to Shelter” and the arrival of unprecedented numbers of migrants in our city and our requirement to support them. It is long overdue, and a welcome step forward in addressing a crisis that has had far-reaching implications for our city, our people, and our values.
New Yorkers have always recognized we are a city of immigrants, and a city that looks after its own. But when the Callahan decree was put into place more than 40 years ago, as part of a court-ordered settlement, it focused on providing shelter and dignity to fewer than 2,5000 unhoused New Yorkers.
Specifically, that Callahan suit was brought to protect the longtime homeless men and the immediate impact of the 1981 consent decree was to require the city to find 125 additional beds. The Callahan decree was never designed to cope with a national immigration crisis involving influxes of........