On May 23, Eric Adams announced his intent to challenge New York City’s bedrock right to shelter as it applies to homeless single adults and families without minor children, threatening to upend a protection that, over the years, has saved hundreds of thousands of people from having to sleep on the streets. The mayor’s basic argument is that the city could never have foreseen the rapid increase in need for emergency shelter beds fueled by the influx of asylum seekers, that the city is out of resources, and that the lack of resources should trigger relief from the legal obligation to provide emergency shelter beds for people in need.

The reality is that Mayor Adams failed to plan for what was already an increasing shelter census, ignored the ongoing crisis of mass homelessness that has kept tens of thousands of New Yorkers stranded in shelters, and has consistently refused to take measures to create more shelter capacity by helping people move into housing.

While it is perhaps an exaggeration to say this is a crisis of Adams’ own making, it’s not much of one. His proposed fix — relieving the city of its obligation under the state Constitution to provide shelter for those in need — will irreparably harm countless individuals and families and result in far more people bedding down on the streets

The mayor cites a 75% increase in the shelter census. But what that calculation ignores is that, prior to the surge in asylum seekers, the census was artificially low for reasons related to the pandemic, such as the temporary eviction moratoria. The shelter census had in fact been increasing before the pandemic because the underlying cause of mass homelessness, the lack of affordable housing, has been largely unaddressed.

Since, as far as I’m aware, thousands of units of affordable housing didn’t magically appear during the pandemic — and, indeed, skyrocketing rents and inflation have made things even worse — it was only reasonable to assume that the lifting of the pandemic-era protections would cause the census to again climb. Projections of where the shelter census would be at the beginning of 2023 that account for these facts result in figures that essentially match what the census in fact was in January: roughly 73,000. Today’s census of just more than 81,000 is higher, but only by about 8,000 people.

Adams could have been doing far more about the crisis. Last year, the number of households provided with city-funded rent vouchers reached its lowest level in five years; the number of single adults placed into supportive housing was at its second-lowest level since 2004; and affordable housing and set-aside units financed for homeless households was at its lowest level in eight years.