NYC, state officials trade blame for slow-moving migrant housing program

Mayor Eric Adams’ administration this week chided the state for only moving a fraction of migrant families out of shelter through a $25 million program that kicked off in the spring — and while the city’s numbers were lower than what the state reported, city officials weren’t far off.

“We keep on asking the state to help us with resettlement,” said Anne Williams-Isom, the deputy mayor for health and human services, at a City Hall press briefing this week. “I think they've resettled 20 families?”

A spokesperson for the state Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance, or OTDA, which is running the program, said 50 families have signed leases and moved or are about to move. About 150 more are enrolled and receiving case management services.

But the number of leases still represents less than 5% of the 1,250 families the Migrant Relocation Assistance Program, or MRAP, is funded to support.

“We will continue to work with New York City and the participating communities to enroll as many families as possible,” OTDA spokesperson Anthony Farmer said in a statement Wednesday.

The program was approved in the state budget in May and is designed so the state works with nonprofit groups to place families in housing outside of the city, with rent payments covered for up to a year.

As of last month, more than 48,000 migrants traveling as families were in the city’s care, data published by the city comptroller’s office shows. More than 90% of these families included children, and the overall number of migrants in city shelters has continued to balloon since last year.

Williams-Isom’s recent comments and MRAP’s slow progress expose ongoing rifts between the city and state in their handling of the migrant influx, which is bringing hundreds of migrants to the city weekly and driving up the costs of caring for them — already in the billions of dollars.

In a statement Thursday, Avi Small, a spokesperson for Gov. Kathy Hochul, said the state has “repeatedly asked the city to identify participants and we are pleased they recently began doing so, including successfully identifying 77 eligible families — roughly 40% of the total enrollment to date — within the past seven days.”

Small added the state has contributed nearly half of the city's shelter costs, identified state-run land for shelters and paid $88 million in legal and administrative services for migrants.

“We also successfully pressured the federal government to grant the city access to Floyd Bennett Field, which we hope will welcome migrants soon — six weeks after the federal government granted access and the state committed to paying for the site,” he added, appearing to take a dig at the Adams administration’s delays in opening the new site.

MRAP demands significant coordination among city, state and nonprofit workers — from determining families’ eligibility to transporting them to one of the five counties joined in the resettlement efforts: Albany, Erie, Monroe, Suffolk and Westchester. The city initially screens and refers families for MRAP, but communication between the city and state has been far from seamless. Some families have expressed interest in the program, only to decline to participate later on, state officials have said.

On Tuesday, Williams-Isom said the state had “hit some obstacles” while administering MRAP, even as she praised its premise as “an excellent idea.” She suggested those obstacles include available housing stock, securing furniture and other logistics, and possibly the yearlong rental subsidies the program provides families.

“Maybe that should be more,” she said. “Everything should be on the table … to figure out ‘what do I need, how do I get people connected?’”

Let’s put an air mattress in there, and let’s get this done. Somehow people don’t have the same sense of urgency I think that we do.

Anne Williams-Isom, NYC deputy mayor for health and human services

The city has referred hundreds of families for MRAP, but the program had only about 75 homes available, the deputy mayor added. “So it’s not about having families that have their work authorization or have done their paperwork on the way, it’s really about how many units they have available,” she said. “And I might be like, ‘let’s put an air mattress in there, and let’s get this done.’ Somehow people don’t have the same sense of urgency I think that we do.”

Beyond rental subsidies, the program offers eligible families a bevy of social services, including case management, job counseling and medical care. Families must opt in by signing a consent form acknowledging they understand “any effects that relocating could have on your immigration case or other legal matters” and that, if authorized to work in the United States, they “must accept any job offered to you that you are able to do and … contribute to your family’s housing and household expenses.”

But the program’s rules have limited how many families have been able to take advantage of it so far, an investigation by New York Focus found. In addition to being voluntary, MRAP requires applicants to be on the path to receiving a federal work permit by having applied for asylum or other immigration relief, such as Temporary Protected Status, which the Biden administration expanded for Venezuelan nationals last month. City and state officials say they have been helping more migrants seek immigration relief so they can become self-sufficient — a primary goal of MRAP.

The program’s meager uptake comes as the Adams administration recently announced it would issue 60-day vacate notices to thousands of migrant families in city shelters. While the families would be allowed to reapply for shelter at the city’s main intake center for arriving migrants, the move is likely to displace and cause difficulty for families with children in local schools, and advocates have warned it could lead to an increase in street homelessness.

MRAP’s struggles also come a few months before Hochul will need to present her next state spending plan, including any migrant measures. It is unclear whether funding for the program will be renewed next year, but Hochul has indicated in court papers she would expand the program only if it achieves strong results.

After Hochul proposed the program in her budget submission last January, her office said MRAP would serve as a “critical initiative” to resettle migrant families. State lawmakers approved funding for the program in May, a few days before the governor declared a state emergency over the migrant influx.

A lot of the clients may not really know what [the program] is...when all you know is Times Square, because that’s where you got dropped off by bus and where you've been staying.

Kathryn Kliff, Legal Aid Society attorney

Kathryn Kliff, an attorney at the Legal Aid Society, said MRAP could benefit from support from a broader swath of community nonprofits across the state who provide refugee resettlement services and could help assuage families’ fears about leaving New York City. Most of the migrants in the city’s care have taken long, treacherous journeys, she noted, and are likely unfamiliar with other places in the state, especially in regards to employment and safety concerns.

“Understandably, a lot of the clients may not really know what [the program] is or what to expect, being asked ‘what county do you want to go to?’ when all you know is Times Square, because that’s where you got dropped off by bus and where you've been staying,” said Kliff. “It probably sounds very foreign and scary.”

But, she added, “the more people that start to use it and use it successfully…will certainly help in making more families willing to participate.”