After Mayor Eric Adams made comments today blaming the recently-enacted Local Law 62 for his assertion that migrant New Yorkers will be forced onto the streets, New York City Public Advocate Jumaane D. Williams – prime sponsor of the law – issued the following statement:
"It’s frustrating to hear the mayor scapegoat a law that aggregates, affirms, and publicizes the existing rights of homeless New Yorkers as an excuse for the failure of the government to address the homelessness crisis, a law he did not veto. None of the Mayor's policies would have significantly helped this crisis for the 50,000 homeless individuals in city shelters the day before the first migrant bus arrived at Port Authority.
“The law that the mayor is spreading misinformation about was introduced amid the administration’s dehumanizing sweeps of encampments, to prevent the criminalization of homelessness and ensure protections are upheld in shelters. The mayor has a pattern of saying things with a disregard for the reality behind them or the harm that results, and I hope he will retract his false statements and instead focus on actually implementing the law and addressing the issue.
“With temperatures dropping, families sleeping on the streets is not an inevitability, no matter what the mayor claims. It is a failure of government on all levels, and must be addressed with resolve, not redirection. Rather than continuing to try and strip away the rights of homeless New Yorkers in policy and in court, the mayor should be redirecting funding used to criminalize homelessness and put it toward the only solution that will address this crisis – permanent, deeply affordable, accessible housing.”