More Counties Enact Emergency Declarations

So far 38 out of 57 counties outside of New York City, along with three towns, took emergency actions because of the irreparable harm that would be caused by Mayor Eric Adams attempting to transform hotels and motels into homeless shelters in municipalities that do not have the conditions, infrastructure, and resources to assist.

Despite Governor Kathy Hochul’s efforts to tell the City of New York to communicate their intentions with neighboring municipalities, Mayor Eric Adams is not listening and continuing to act as President of New York State. The City of New York is not only continuing to deceive local municipalities and lawmakers to their plan, but they are also not responding to FOIL’s and requests made in open court for the agreements between hotels and the City of New York which would allow administrations to learn the true scope of the City’s intent.

We implore the Governor to govern the whole State of New York and begin listening to the people across New York who are overwhelmingly opposed to this decompression strategy.

Mayor Adams does not have the right to dictate what should and can happen outside of city limits.

New York City’s current population is down roughly half a million since April 2020, over 20,000 hotel rooms are unoccupied, and more than 2,000 of the city’s supportive housing units – which are meant for homeless individuals – are available.

For this Sanctuary City to claim they do not have the space is false, with this poorly planned decompression strategy even drawing criticism from the New York City Council.

Instead of reaching out to municipalities months ago, the City is – with little notice – attempting to turn hotels into homeless shelters across New York, with Rockland County eyed to be among the first. The fact that the largest city in the entire country believes shifting their responsibility to the smallest county in the State of New York is a good idea just underscores how absurd this plan is and the lack of planning that was done by the Adams Administration.

Some of the irreparable harm that would be caused by the City of New York’s plan includes compounding the housing crisis the County has due to a lack of housing and affordable housing. The County of Rockland is currently conducting a Housing Needs Assessment which early findings include:

• 177% increase in low-income/subsidized rental housing calls & 160% increase in rental payment assistance calls to the United Way Hotline for Human Services from 2018 through 2022.
• 63% increase in students experiencing homelessness from 2018 through 2022.

There’s a famous saying that goes “failing to plan is planning to fail,” which is exactly what has happened. These are the consequences being caused by the City of New York’s failure to plan for a crisis they knew was coming.