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Beatriz walks with one of her two daughters in Midtown while they were staying
in a migrant family shelter, Dec. 12, 2023. (Gwynne Hogan / THE CITY)

Migrant studentsEnglish language learnersEric Adams


ALMOST HALF OF MIGRANT FAMILIES WHO GOT 60-DAY EVICTION NOTICES MOVED OUT OF NYC
SHELTERS

By 
Gwynne Hogan, THE CITY
and
Michael Elsen-Rooney
 | March 1, 2024, 9:34am HST
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This article is part of an ongoing collaboration between Chalkbeat and THE CITY.

Beatriz, a Venezuelan mother of two young girls, got a 60-day notice to leave
their Midtown migrant shelter last November.

The next day, she said, she was out hunting for apartments.

Working under the table in an Irish pub in Hell’s Kitchen, she’d been able to
save some money, pooling it with her boyfriend and a cousin and his family. It
was enough for the upfront costs to rent a three-bedroom apartment in Crown
Heights they would all share. By the time her 60 days ran out, Beatriz and her
girls had already moved out of the shelter.

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“We’re totally thankful,” Beatriz, who asked that her last name be withheld
fearing immigration consequences, said in Spanish. “We’ve been given so much.”

Beatriz is among the first swath of migrant families with children to see their
time in city shelters run out under a newly implemented city policy for migrant
families in certain shelters. Notices started coming due in early January, and
of the around 7,500 parents and children who reached their 60-day limit, half
have moved out, according data through late February from the mayor’s office.

A further breakdown of the data released by New York City Comptroller Brad
Lander’s last month on the 60-day policy found that of about 4,750 families
who’d had their time expire through early February, 29% of them, or about 1,300
families, reapplied for shelter and were transferred to new shelters. The
remaining 16% stayed in the same shelter where they were originally placed.

Among those who’ve gotten the notices are families like Beatriz’ who came in the
fall of 2022 and had more than a year to find work and make connections in New
York City.

But many who received the notices have entered the migrant shelter system since
the rule has been in place, like families living at the sprawling tent facility
at Floyd Bennett Field, or those at a recently opened family shelter in an old
warehouse in Brooklyn’s Clinton Hill, who’ve had much less time to get their
bearings in a new country.

Migrants leaving the Row Hotel stored their belongings on the sidewalk before
heading to a new shelter, Jan. 4, 2024. (Ben Fractenberg / THE CITY)

The mayor’s office didn’t return a request for additional comment on the new
data, but members of the Eric Adams administration have repeatedly defended the
shelter stay limits, crediting them for driving down costs. They also say the
policy is keeping the number of migrants in city shelters — which hovers at
around 64,000 people — from continuing to grow. The numbers have even slightly
dipped in recent weeks, despite more than a thousand newcomers arriving each
week.

For adult migrants who are subject to strict 30-day shelter limits, with days or
weekslong waits to get another cot, many have resorted to sleeping on the
streets or trains, in overcrowded mosques, or unsanctioned commercial spaces.
This week, Gothamist reported on one couple living in a school bus.

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The Adams administration has repeatedly said its main goal is not to have
families with children sleeping on the streets. In all, city officials said
they’ve given 9,100 families shelter eviction notices so far. While some like
Beatriz have landed on their feet, critics of the 60-day policy say many more
parents and children who can’t afford to move out have been put through
unnecessary turmoil.

“The 60-day shelter limit for families with children is one of the cruelest
policies to come from City Hall in generations, evicting families from shelter
in the middle of winter, and displacing kids from their schools in the middle of
the school year,” said Lander, who has promised to investigate the policy. He
pointed out City Hall has relatively little information on what happens to
migrants when they leave shelters.

“Where did those nearly 2,500 parents go? Were they in a dangerously overcrowded
basement? Were they sleeping on the street? We have no idea.”


‘FAMILIES GOING DARK’

Schools with migrant students forced to move because of the 60-day rule have
been grappling with the logistical and emotional fallout of the disruptions.

“Just said goodbye to another four newcomers who are moving away after being
with us for a year,” said one Manhattan principal, who spoke on the condition of
anonymity. “Lots of tears from the kids and adults.”

Upper West Side parent Naveed Hasan, who sits on the city’s school board, the
Panel for Educational Policy, has been part of an informal group of parents,
school staff, and local elected officials working to find students who disappear
suddenly from classes.

“It’s really like families going dark and then leaving people really confused.
Where are they, and how can we help them?” Hasan said. “And I think this is sort
of the intended effect of a policy.”

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Testifying at a City Council hearing Friday, Molly Schaeffer, the head of the
city’s office of Asylum Seeker Operations, said that 90% of children who were
evicted in the month of January remained in their same school, though she didn’t
give specifics. “We really did prioritize education and the education of the
youngest children when making these types of choices and moves,” she said,
adding the office tried to keep families in the same borough as their youngest
child’s school.

Migrants leaving the Row Hotel stored their belongings on the sidewalk before
heading to a new shelter, Jan. 4, 2024. (Ben Fractenberg / THE CITY)

Schools that recently got influxes of new students are already seeing them
transferred to shelters in other parts of the city, leaving staffers with
whiplash.

“In a month we had more than 50 students…and now I don’t know what’s going to
happen with them,” said Carolina Zafra, a teacher at P.S. 46 in Clinton Hill,
among several schools in the area that received a sudden surge in students,
following the opening of a new shelter for families in a converted warehouse.

School staffers knew the new students were subject to the 60-day shelter stay
limit, but were holding out hope that city officials wouldn’t enforce it, Zafra
said.

The school wrote letters for families to bring back to the shelter showing they
were enrolled in a nearby school in the hopes it might get them a reprieve. But
when teachers came back from mid-winter break this week, they found that many of
their students had already been moved. Zafra has one student who’s now commuting
to the school from Manhattan and she heard about another living by JFK airport.

“I’m more concerned about all the emotional distress those children already
experienced and now again moving them from something I thought was settled for
them,” she said.

One mom who arrived from Venezuela in December and enrolled her two kids at P.S.
46 said her family was transferred from the Hall Street shelter to a shelter in
Midtown Manhattan last week.

The mom, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said she never considered
transferring her kids to a new school, even though her commute is now close to
an hour.

“They have a lot of patience with the children,” she said of the school, in
Spanish. “I didn’t want to change their school because they feel good there.”

Homeless students in New York City are entitled to transportation under federal
law so that they can remain in the same school if they move. Kids and parents in
temporary housing are eligible for free MetroCards, and younger students can
also get assigned to school bus routes, though that process can take some time.

But the mom said their MetroCards are still pending, and since the family has no
income to pay the fares, they often have to sneak through open emergency gates.
Her husband has already received a fine for doing so.

Still, the Venezuelan mom considers herself lucky compared to other families
from the school who were placed in shelters even further away, she said.


‘I FELT SUCH RELIEF’

Among those 16% of families who’ve been able to remain in their shelters,
according to the data from the comptroller, many are living at the remote tent
shelter located at Floyd Bennett Field. Some describe their extended stay there
as both a blessing and a curse.

Geraldine, a 38-year-old mother of three from Venezuela, who moved into Floyd
Bennett Field last December, said getting used to the tents was a challenge: the
long walks in the cold across a vast marshland to the nearest bus stop, the
bathrooms and showers in trailers outside of the living quarters, the lack of
privacy and constant cries of collicky children. The disruptions during severe
weather have also been hard, like the January evening when the city evacuated
thousands of residents to a nearby school due to high winds.

Venezuelan migrants Geraldine, Jhon and their daughter Yorliannys, leave the
Floyd Bennett Field family shelter for the day, Jan. 25, 2024. (Gwynne Hogan /
THE CITY)

Still, as her eviction date approached she prayed the family would get to stay
put, dreading the disruption of packing up and starting again somewhere new. The
family collected their belongings the night before their mid-February move-out
day, still unsure what would happen. But when her husband checked in with staff
the next morning, he was told they could get another 60 days in the same
cubicle.

“I felt such relief,” Geraldine said, who asked that her full name not be used
to protect her family’s identity. “We didn’t have to go all the way to [Midtown]
with the kids,” she said, referring to the process of reapplying for shelter at
the Roosevelt Hotel. Instead their kids continued at their schools without
interruption.

“The idea is to finish our time here, save up money and move out,” she said.


‘I FEEL GOOD, AND I’M AFRAID, AT THE SAME TIME’

Beatriz’ hunt for their new home was difficult, as it is for many New Yorkers.
She fronted $500 to someone promising an apartment and spent a day standing in
the rain outside what she thought was her new apartment in Astoria before
realizing it was a scam.

When a rental finally came through, she and her daughters moved out little by
little, shuttling their belongings on the subway over the course of several
days. After the winter break, Beatriz pulled her kids out of school and
transferred them to ones closer to their new Crown Heights home, unable to make
the bi-borough commute. Her 7-year-old daughter seems to be adjusting, while her
11-year-old is having a more difficult time.

“She misses all her friends from class,” Beatriz said.

Beatriz relishes being able to cook for herself and the family again, something
she couldn’t do for more than a year living in a hotel room. She’s enjoying the
privacy and peace of having their own place. But she also feels the anxiety of
so many New Yorkers living paycheck to paycheck, that a little disruption could
lead to an inability to make rent and send her back to shelter.

“I feel good, and I’m afraid, at the same time,” Beatriz said. “And the fear,
because if one of us loses our job, god willing, how would we pay rent?”

Gwynne Hogan covers Brooklyn for THE CITY.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public
schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.


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