NYC NOW - November 7, 2023: Evening Roundup

Episode Date: November 7, 2023

State lawmakers are proposing adding more than two dozen new crimes to New York's hate crimes statute. Plus, WNYC’s Michael Hill talks with reporters Jessica Gould and Karen Yi about the worries parents of some migrant children in New York City are having regarding their children’s education.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. I'm Jene Pierre. You might ask why, and I think the reason is we haven't seen the level of hate crimes in New York as we're seeing right now. New York's hate crime statute needs an update. That's according to some state lawmakers who say it's outdated and doesn't include crimes like gang assault and certain sex crimes. Patton District Attorney Alvin Bragg says an update will allow law enforcement to track hate with more realistic statistics. So we have some internal tracking, but this is going to make the charges reflect what actually is the conduct. Sponsors of a new bill say these crimes were not included in the original creation of the hate crime law,

and they're concerned about the current climate. They point to FBI stats that show a peak in hate crimes investigations in 2022. Lawmakers are proposing adding 31 new crimes to New York's hate crime statute. Stay close. There's more after the break. Under a new policy from the Adams administration, some migrant families living in New York City shelters for more than 60 days will have to leave or reapply for housing. That leaves some parents searching for places to live and worrying they may have to uproot children from schools and friends they've come to love. For more, my colleague Michael Hill talked with WNYC reporters Karen Yee and Jessica Gould. Karen, you've been speaking with families who've received these notices. Please tell us.

What do they say? Yeah, I was speaking to families outside of the row last week. This is one of the Midtown hotels that's been turned into a shelter. And moms and dads were telling me that there are these notices, papered around the hallways, in various languages, warning them that they're going to have 60 days to leave. They told me that staff are coming around and knocking on doors and telling families the exact date of when they're going to have to leave their rooms, and they're referring to families to a social worker if they don't have a place to go. But families told me that they're not really getting answers on what this is going to mean for their kids who are in school.

And many of the families we spoke to face a deadline right around Christmas to find a new place to live. Reina Perez has a kindergartner and a third grader at PS75 on the Upper West Side. And she told me she has until December 31st to move out. No, they're going to change their school, that they have their amigos, to, they want to her professors, they have gotten a much carino. So she's saying there that her kids don't want to have to change schools. They've already made friends, they love their teachers, and they've really adapted well to the school where they've been for about a year now.

Bres can't find an affordable apartment and doesn't know where she'll live next year, but she doesn't want to bounce her children between schools. As of last week, we know so far that the city has issued about 250 of these 60-day notices. Mayor Adams has said migrant children's children's education won't be disrupted, and under federal law, homeless students are entitled to stay in the current schools if they want to. So, Jessica, why do advocates for migrant families worry? Yeah, they worry that this right to stay in their current schools is going to end up a right in name only because of how complicated the logistics could get. It's unclear where these migrant families

will go and where they'll be placed if they reapply to shelter. A draft notice we reviewed doesn't even mention they have a right to stay at their current school at all. And if they end up very far from where they go to school now, it may require commutes that are too long. Elementary school students and shelters are entitled to busing, but parents have been telling me that getting kids connected to buses can take weeks. And this is on top of longstanding problems in the city's school bus system, like a shortage of drivers and inefficient routes and delays. And parents who talked to said that could be destabilizing, not just for the migrant families, but for the broader school community as well. Right. Karen and I spent some time last week outside of PS-145 on the Upper West Side, and that school's

taken in about 130 migrant students over the past year. Now, the schools really come together to support newcomer students. They've hosted a Thanksgiving dinner for families and shelters. They advocated for more bilingual social workers and teachers. They've taken home, family's laundry even the teachers have and gotten new washers and dryers installed. So here's what one of the parent leaders, Navid Hassan, said about families having to move. It creates sort of domino effects for their teachers who've been doing a lot of amazing work above and beyond what they're normally expected to do. To be told that you have to do it all over again every two months is unacceptable.

He says, you know, a whole new group of migrant kids could enroll as a result of these evictions. and that could be the case at a lot of schools across the city. Karen, why is the Adams administration limiting shelter stays for families with children? What does it hope to accomplish? Right. This is the latest move by the city to really cut back on the emergency housing services that it's providing to migrants who come to New York with no place to live. And remember, for the last 40 years, the city has had right to shelter, and that basically has guaranteed a roof to anyone who needs it.

But the Adams administration has been slowly chipping away at these protections, sort of carving out groups of migrants that are housed outside of the traditional shelter system and setting limits on their stays. So Mayor Adams has repeatedly said that the city has now run out of room in a shelter system. And last month, he even warned that people would be sleeping on the street. Already single adult migrants are limited to 30-day stays in shelter. And this 60-day rule for families will apply to about 40-2. 200 families who are in shelters that are run by New York City Health and hospitals.

What we don't know yet is sort of what criteria the city is using to decide which families will receive their 60-day notices first. Jessica, I just have to ask, what will these shelter limits for families? What will they really mean for students? You know, as you can imagine, it could just cause so many disruptions from their ability to learn English and overcome what for many students. What for many students are these really large gaps in schooling. Some kids are coming into schools many grade levels behind. I recently spoke with a fourth grade teacher who is trying to split her time between her students who are reading at a fourth grade level and then migrant students who are just learning how to read and write their names. And students in shelter generally have really high absentee rates.

They tend to have lower test scores and a higher chance of dropping out. And advocates worry these changes are just going to exacerbate the challenges they face. Generally, this is just more instability for children who have already experienced a lot of instability, not to mention outright trauma. Fifth grader Paula Adriina Jimenez hasn't received a 60-day notice yet, but here's what she had to say about how she doesn't want to leave her school if her family has to relocate. So she's saying everyone in her school. So she's saying everyone in her school is kind and that she really likes her school. That's WNYC reporter's Jessica Gould and Karen Yeat, talking with my colleague Michael Hill. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WMYC.

Catch us every weekday, three times a day. I'm Jene Pierre. We'll be back tomorrow.