With Veto Override on Housing, City Council Deepens Conflict With Adams
But Mr. Adams vetoed the bills last month because of concerns about the cost of the expansion. He opted instead to meet one Council priority through executive order: eliminating a rule that required people to stay in shelters for 90 days before they could get vouchers. Housing advocates have long urged city officials to eliminate the 90-day rule, saying that it would make it easier to move people from shelter to permanent housing, an issue that intensified with the influx of more than 80,000 asylum seekers since spring. The city is housing more than 50,000 migrants.
On Wednesday, city officials said that order allowed some 500 families who would not have otherwise been eligible to receive vouchers.
Mr. Adams attacked the voucher bills in an opinion piece in The Daily News last week, writing that “the package of bills they passed could cost billions” and would “make it harder for those actually experiencing homelessness to find a permanent home.”
Ms. Adams, who is not related to the mayor, took issue with his reasoning, saying that it was “disconcerting to see it misconstrued that somehow these bills would open the program to people in our city who are not in greatest need.”
The veto is the second that the mayor has issued during his 18 months in office. Mr. Adams’s predecessor, Mayor Bill de Blasio, did not veto any bills during his eight-year tenure. Ms. Adams had warned shortly after the suite of bills was approved that there were enough votes to override a mayoral veto.
Source: The New York Times
