A day after City Hall announced it would be seeking relief from the courts regarding a decades old court judgment, the mayor and his top officials were all trying to explain how they were not trying to fundamentally change the city’s right to shelter.

“New York has done its share,” Mayor Eric Adams said. “Our shelter system is buckling. We are trying to prevent it from collapsing.”

A defiant response from Adams.

“We are now seeking clarity from the court to really deal with this issue that is a national problem,” he added.

What You Need To Know

  • On Tuesday, the Adams administration asked a state court to reopen a decades old case defining the city's obligations to shelter homeless adults

  • City Hall says it wants to add a provision to pause its requirements if it lacks resources and capacity to provide sufficient shelter

  • On Wednesday, the mayor and his team defended their moves, saying the city shelter system is buckling under pressure

On Tuesday, the Adams administration asked a state court to revisit the 1981 right to shelter decision, which requires the city to provide shelter for homeless New Yorkers, requesting the court potentially add this paragraph.

It requests its obligations be stayed if the city lacks the resources and capacity to maintain sufficient shelter sites.

The Legal Aid Society, who represents the plaintiff in the case, is planning to fight the move.

“If the city were successful with the request they were going to make, they would be able to ignore decades of constitutional protections for every New Yorker and leave people exposed to the elements, to injury or worse, without any place to go,” Josh Goldfein of the Legal Aid Society, said. “And that’s not a world where New Yorkers want to live in. What do they think is going to happen if they’re successful? They’re not going to stop people from coming. Instead, we would just have people living on the streets, getting sicker and dying.”

The mayor’s top counsel said that’s not the intent.

“The intention here is not to get a court order and have thousands of people living on the street,” Brendan McGuire, the mayor’s chief counsel, said. “That is not how this administration thinks about this.”

Trying to defend the move, the mayor’s counsel, deputy mayor and top commissioners all assembled at City Hall to give a full throated defense.

“New York City cannot single handedly provide care to everyone crossing our border,” Deputy Mayor Anne Williams-Isom said.

Officials said the surge of migrants into the city will cost billions of dollars.

There are now over 44,000 migrants in city shelters. And it ballooned the city’s entire emergency shelter system to historic levels with about 93,000 people.

Right now, the state is not signing on to the mayor’s efforts.

“Right now, I’ll simply say right now we’re dealing with complicated legal issues and we’ll see how it unfolds in the courts,” Gov. Kathy Hochul said.