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By Joshua Solomon | Capitol Bureau

ALBANY — New York City officials will seek to relocate the remaining 1,800 migrants staying in upstate hotels in permanent housing by the end of the year.

But the city maintains that it may need to continue using the upstate hotels because its shelter system remains over capacity, an indication that its temporary housing plan will for now remain in perpetuity.

The city plans to connect the migrants with permanent housing, including through voluntary state-funded programs that require a person to be eligible for public assistance — the types of services that many migrants initially lacked when they were bused by New York City to makeshift shelters at hotels.

For those who do not find permanent housing, whether an individual or a family, they could be offered the opportunity to return to New York City and go through the process of re-entering the shelter program.

The plan was disclosed to the Times Union by the office of Mayor Eric Adams in response to a series of questions last week on what has been an indefinite program of temporarily housing the migrants upstate. New York City recently solicited nonprofits to carry on the work at the hotels for at least an additional 12 months.

A spokesman for the state Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance confirmed there are plans to place all families in residences, although the agency official did not specify a timeline.

“The expectation is that each household currently placed in a hotel outside New York City will be provided support to secure permanent housing outside of (New York City) if that is their preference,” spokesman Darren O’Sullivan said in a statement.

New York City’s legal team has for the past year ardently defended its work in litigation in federal and state courts, across more than a dozen cases. The city has asserted it has the legal right to house migrants outside of its municipal boundaries in hotels without the consent of local governments.

The Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance, listed as a nominal defendant in some of the litigation, has not sought to penalize New York City for improperly housing migrants upstate.

The protracted litigation has brought attention to whether local governments can assert various rights over what happens within their boundaries due to the actions of New York City, which has asserted its relocation sheltering system is grounded in state authority.

In most cases where a ruling has been issued, the courts have favored the rights of local governments, most of which seek to block the relocation of migrants in their community on the grounds that it may violate local zoning laws, local executive orders and the state’s social services laws involving the need to have consent to relocate homeless people in another municipality.

New York City’s plans attempt to juggle its long-sought legal argument that the temporary housing upstate is the only way to handle the migrant crisis while seeking to permanently resettle families to get them out of the shelter system.

“The city continues to explore other options to collaborate with counties in the state. But even if all those efforts are successful, it will not be enough to alleviate fully the current and expected shortfall of beds,” interim director of the New York City Office of Asylum Seeker Operations Molly Schaeffer said in a sworn affidavit two months ago.

“The city continues to need to use hotel rooms outside the city as a small part of its efforts to address the crisis of asylum seekers,” Schaeffer continued.

The city’s legal argument has been based on the theory that it can relocate migrants outside of its municipal boundaries and to hotels elsewhere as a last resort, based on rules from the state Office of Temporary and Disability and Assistance.

The argument also hinges on an executive order issued by Gov. Kathy Hochul regarding the migrant crisis and an FAQ issued by the state agency in May 2023 that avoids answering whether the hotels would constitute shelters. If the hotels qualify, legally, as shelters, it would trigger a set of rules for the services provided within those hotels and the need to notify and receive consent from local governments about the relocation of individuals.

The migrant resettling plan comes after a back-and-forth last month between Albany County Executive Dan McCoy and the Adams administration. McCoy said at the time there was a plan for migrants to be sent back to New York City. But city officials said that was not the plan.

In the weeks since, migrants in the Albany area continue to express concerns about the uncertainty of their situation to immigration advocates.

“There’s a common sentiment that folks don’t really know what’s happening and what to expect,” said Bryan MacCormack, executive director and co-founder of the Columbia County Sanctuary Movement.

The nonprofit has worked closely, when allowed, with the migrants in the Hudson Valley and Capital Region through a state grant with the New York Immigration Coalition. It has not received direct funds for its migrant work from the state, New York City or DocGo, the embattled and publicly traded mobile health care company overseeing the upstate shelters for the city.

“What is the objective here?” McCormack added. “Is the objective to have people perpetually in a shelter system or is it to resettle folks? If the goal is to resettle folks, then why is there not more communication and coordination with government entities and nonprofits?”

Lauren DesRosiers, a senior staff attorney with the Immigration Law Clinic at the Justice Center at Albany Law School, expressed similar concerns.

“It’s unclear what the ultimate goal of the program is,” DesRosiers said. “Is it to help people resettle upstate? Or is it a ‘temporary’ fix?”

DesRosiers said the people in the Albany hotels and their advocates have received confusing and contradictory information,  and have not received clarification about the long-term plans despite repeatedly asking for it.

“If the goal is resettlement upstate, then the state should appropriately fund the community organizations leading those efforts — including the incredible local organizations providing assistance” through the “migrant relocation assistance program,” DesRosiers said.  Appropriate investments in immigration legal services are important, too, she added.

DesRosiers cautioned that if New York City  returns people to New York City, after a year in Albany, without notice or a hearing, “that’s a problem.”

“Failing to provide people with the bare minimum raises concerns that could implicate constitutional and other legal protections,” DesRosiers said.

The state’s work on migrant relocation, similar to its refugee resettlement efforts, had a slow start.

About $11 million — or 1 percent of the state’s $1 billion spent on the migrant crisis — has been paid for relocation programming as of the end of June, according to records with the state comptroller’s office. An additional $15 million has been spent on legal services.

But the Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance said Friday that 415 families have been relocated to permanent housing outside of New York City, including 114 in Albany County. An additional 807 families have expressed interest and are eligible for the relocation program.

But 335 other families who were referred to the program either declined to participate or were not eligible, raising questions about where they might go by the end of the year.

The focus on legal services and casework indicated a move toward permanent resettlement in New York City’s recent solicitation for vendors to take over the work of the embattled DocGo.

The request for proposal calls for a future contractor with the city who must address “barriers toward exiting the shelter, with performance metrics focused on exits and resettlement” with its clients, the migrants, and must provide support for “court process navigation assistance and resettlement.”

The language is a stark change from what DocGo was employed to do under a $432 million, no-bid contract awarded 14 months ago. The Times Union previously reported on the lack of casework focused on work authorization, asylum and finding permanent housing, leading to increased costs for taxpayers over the coming year.

“That’s consistent with what we’ve thought — that OTDA is taking a very hands-off approach here,” Josh Goldfein, an attorney for The Legal Aid Society, said about the state agency last August. “And New York City purposely set these shelters up outside of DHS because they wanted to be able to claim that DHS regulations didn’t apply to them.”

Nearly a year later, those 1,800 migrants remaining in upstate hotels — housing that New York City has maintained are not shelters and therefore not subject to shelter regulations — may end up receiving typical resources provided to those in a homeless shelter.