As holidays approach, migrants face eviction from New York City shelters

NEW YORK (AP) — It could be a cold, grim New Year for thousands of migrant families living in New York City's emergency shelter system.

With winter setting in, they are being told they need to clear out, with no guarantee they'll be given a bed elsewhere.

Homeless migrants and their children were limited to 60 days in city housing under an order issued in October by Mayor Eric Adams, a move the Democrat says is necessary to relieve a shelter system overwhelmed by asylum-seekers crossing the southern US border.

That clock is now ticking down for people like Karina Obando, a 38-year-old mother from Ecuador who has been given until January 5 to get out of the former hotel where she has been staying with her two young children.

Where she will end up next is unclear. After that date, she can reapply for admission to the shelter system. A placement might not happen right away. Her family could wind up getting sent to one of the city's huge tent shelters far from where her 11-year-old son goes to school.

“I told my son, 'Take advantage. Enjoy the hotel because we have a roof right now,'” Obando said in Spanish outside Row NYC, a towering, 1,300-room hotel the city converted into a shelter for migrants in the heart of the theatre district. “Because they're going to send us away and we're going to be sleeping on the train, or on the street.”

A handful of cities across the US dealing with an influx of homeless migrants have imposed their own limits on shelter stays, citing a variety of reasons, including spiralling costs, a lack of space and a desire to put pressure on people to either find housing on their own, or leave town entirely.

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