Nonprofit volunteers fight uphill battle to house asylum-seekers amid shelter limits

Candice Braun sat absorbed in her laptop screen at a resource table in a hectically noisy room at Metro Baptist Church on West 40th Street, typing furiously at the keyboard.

“Someone got kicked out of a shelter,” she said.

For more than a year, the volunteer-led nonprofit Artists, Athletes and Activists has operated its resource center every Wednesday and Thursday out of the church’s auditorium, aiding hundreds of the city’s migrants and asylum seekers.

With fast-twitch energy, Braun, the 53-year-old co-founder, was doing what she has increasingly done for the past few months – keeping her clients housed and off the streets. She says that this has become increasingly more pressing, since limits on the length of stay for asylum migrants in city-run shelters were announced in May. 

Taking on an asylum seeker’s case one September morning, Braun said the young man had left the shelter system to chase a job prospect in Tennessee. But when the offer fell through, he returned to the shelter, only to find, for reasons unclear, he was no longer allowed back in.

“He was only there for about a week,” she said. “He didn’t have his 30 days.”

Under the latest restrictions, families have a 60-day limit in shelters and single adults have a stricter 30-day clock. Those looking to extend their stay must reapply at a reticketing center, showing extenuating circumstances and efforts to “move their life forward.”

Advocates argue instances of asylum seekers and migrants being turned away at reticketing centers and evicted from shelters on paper-thin reasons are playing out across the city. Braun and her volunteers routinely “flag” these situations, enlisting her network of power holders – immigration lawyers, social workers, those “who work in the shelter system”  – to step in and plead their case.

“Sometimes there are little wins,” said Braun. “When people get a shelter extension, a work permit, or get special immigrant juvenile status, it’s uplifting,”

But having seen countless cases, Braun says the results of most mediation efforts come up short.

“It’s sad but there are more distressing losses than happy wins, for sure,” she said.

Since April 2022, over 200,000 asylum migrants escaping hardship and persecution have streamed to New York City. Within that time, the current shelter population has more than doubled according to data by the city comptroller with over 130,000 sleeping in city shelters each night. The city’s social service system has buckled under the weight of the crisis.

While the new regulations have culled the number of asylum seekers at shelters, critics say without intensive follow-up support after their eviction, many are winding up homeless.

Guillermo Alias Guille says he and his family – rocked by the scourge of guerrilla and paramilitary conflicts in his native Colombia – left a life they can no longer return to.

“I know one thing,” he said in Spanish. “I can’t go back to my home country.”

On a cool early night in September, he stood hanging out with Javier Oliveros, a fellow asylum seeker from Venezuela outside the “Row” in Hell’s Kitchen, one of hundreds of hotels-turned-migrant-shelters and just steps away from the Port Authority Bus terminal where thousands of migrants have arrived by the busload.

In simple street clothes, leaning casually against the building, both young men gazed into the city’s nightlife, aglow with glossy billboards and roving crowds. Their longings, however, were pulled elsewhere.

“It’s a beautiful city,” said Guille. “I’m grateful I have a roof over my head, and I’m not standing out in the rain or the cold, but to be honest there is nothing for me here.”

If given the chance, the men say they would settle somewhere far beyond the city limits, free from its soaring rent prices and remorseless pace of life.

“The reason why I came here is to earn enough income to have stability and a house of one’s own,” said Oliveros. “But the situation is complicated.”

Like many asylum seekers, Guille and Olivero’s eagerness to find a wage-earning job has given way to acute restlessness.

“I want to work. I like to work, but I’m not allowed to,” said Guille, who must wait months from the day of his asylum application before he becomes eligible for a work permit. Pushing thoughts of deportation or homelessness out of his mind, he says his pending asylum case helps him breathe easier.

“Because I have all my paperwork in order, it will get me an extension,” he said. Under the state’s “color law,” public benefits, including temporary housing, are given to those applying for asylum. 

Others, like Javier Sivi aren’t as lucky. A recently arrived migrant from Ecuador, Sivi says he has been reduced to selling candy on the street to scrape by on enough cash to live, knowing his options without paperwork are few. 

“One goes out to find work and sometimes contractors make us work without paying us,” he said. “It is a waste of time. I arrived here about four months ago. The situation is hard here.”

“There a lot of young men having a hard time trying to reapply,” said Braun. “My worry is what will happen to them when they are sleeping out in the street or on park benches in the cold where it can be life-threatening.”