Family trouble: Migrant family evictions won’t fix things

Today, the first 40 asylum seeker families in city shelters will start that the city began promising in October, forcing them to reapply or leave the system altogether. Mayor Adams’ administration hopes that these families will of single adults who found other housing after their own 30 day notices expired.

The administration knows it’s taking this bet with worse odds. It’s much easier for a single adult to find alternative lodging — in a pinch, a couch in an acquaintance’s apartment will do — than it is for a family, particularly one with small children. Of the single adults who did leave shelter after their eviction notices, a decent chunk probably left the city altogether, which is no doubt the choice that City Hall hopes some families will make, too.

The problem is, that ship might have sailed for many families whose children are already in school. You don’t need to be a child psychologist to know that many are already deeply affected by their circumstances in the past year: leaving their homes, trekking for weeks or months through dangerous roads and unforgiving wilderness, all to arrive and be cynically ferried to NYC in the middle of the night by a politically motivated Texas governor.

Piling on the interruption of perhaps the only semi normal experience they’ve had throughout all this doesn’t seem tenable, especially if it adds to what is likely severe and irrevocable learning loss. The city, for its part, that it will follow federal law and allow children to remain in their schools, but cannot guarantee that they’ll be placed anywhere near those schools, raising the prospect of de facto removal from the classroom if the placement isn’t granted or is very far away.

Even if most families are placed near children’s existing schools, they’re effectively tethered to NYC; many will pointlessly cycle in and out of the shelter system as they look for housing. We have, from the beginning, insisted that some asylum seeker families could and should find also refuge elsewhere, not because NYC is not a welcoming city, but because it is certainly not the only city in the country or even the state that could accommodate migrant arrivals and both provide services and eventually reap some benefits from population growth and a new labor pool.

This is predicated on concrete, external support, starting from the feds, who should have months ago at least reimbursed the city for its costs and stepped up to help with these placements, alongside the state, which has helped a bit more but not enough. In the absence of this much needed assistance, it’s not altogether clear what these evictions accomplish.

Families seem on their face much less likely to quickly find other housing or leave the city altogether, and the latter situation can hardly be called a victory when we’re forcing the educational interruption of already traumatized children. Is indefinite shelter stay for families a sustainable solution? Certainly not, but there are better options to get them out, including more investment in social and legal services.

The allure of short term fixes cannot make us lose sight of the fact that these are real human beings, and the damage done might be permanent..