Oneida County executive order: NYC can't send homeless here

New York City leaders have to stop trying to force the rest of the state to solve the city’s problems, Oneida County Executive Anthony Picente Jr. said.

Picente issued an executive order on Thursday, Sept. 28 to prevent what he called their latest attempt to get upstate New York to help solve the New York City crisis of migrants who have crossed the border from Mexico into the United States.

In a change to a city housing program for the homeless, New York City will now give rent vouchers for five years to anyone who is homeless in the city and willing to move to any of the 57 counties outside of the five metropolitan boroughs, Mayor Eric Adams announced on Sept. 26.

The executive order prohibits local landlords from accepting any of those vouchers without prior authorization from Picente’s office. Violators will face a fine of $2,000 a day.

“In another veiled attempt to pass this problem on to everyone but himself and the State of New York and the federal government,” Picente said during a news conference on Thursday, “(Adams) has made another move that is designed again to put counties throughout New York State in the line of fire, if you will, or, more importantly, in a no-win situation.”

Although this voucher program would send people who are homeless, not migrants to upstate New York and Long Island, it was created to free up resources and shelter space in New York City for the migrants, Picente claimed.

“It’s absolutely about migrants,” he said. “It’s because you can’t handle the migrant situation that you have. You won’t say stop. You won’t tell the federal government to stop.”

Picente issued another executive order on May 11 after Adams announced plans to bus migrants arriving in New York City to other parts of the state.

That order, which has been continuously renewed, prohibits hotels, shelters, campgrounds and any other place that provides lodging from entering into a housing contract with a municipality without Picente’s approval, leaving no place for migrants to stay.

He and the county have been chastised over what some see as an unwelcoming attitude in an area known for its support and hospitality toward refugees, Picente noted. But he said that the city plans for migrants and people who are homeless are what’s inhumane.

“We’re trying,” Picente said, “to protect the people that we’re responsible for.”

The city’s voucher program would hurt the counties to which people who are homeless move in two big ways, Picente said:

• “What about their other services?” he asked. “What about their medical? What about mental health? What about the education of their children? What about all the services, the food and other needs that they have? If this situation were to happen today, the only thing Oneida County would not be responsible for would be those rental payments. We’ve be responsible for everything else.”

• The city’s vouchers are paying landlords at a higher rate than existing programs to help local people who are homeless or need rental assistance, he said. That means that landlords and business owners, who were already hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, might choose to ask current residents to move out so they can take in the New York refugees, Picente warned. It would severely undercut the county’s ability to help its own residents who are already here and devastate the affordable housing market, where there is already a shortage, he said.

In expressing his disdain for the mayor’s plan, for Gov. Kathy Hochul’s support of it and for the federal government’s failure to address the migrant crisis, Picente let fly a string of adjectives and descriptive nouns during the press conference: unconstitutional, a disgrace, confusing, disheartening, selfish, outrageous, nonsense, shameful, totally unacceptable and inhumane.

“It just flies in the face,” he said, “of not just bad government, but common sense.”

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Picente said he was on a conference call with leaders from other counties and state officials, and all the county leaders who spoke up decried the city’s program as well. And the issue is not about politics, with county leaders in both parties sharing his viewpoint, he noted.

“Any problem that has arrived on my desk as the Oneida County executive, I have never passed on to another municipality or county in the State of New York. I would never think of doing so," Picente said.

“The fact that New York City is doing this and the fact that the governor is sanctioning this is just outrageous and it flies in the face of home-rule counties.”

To get county authorization to accept a city voucher, the applicant has to give information on the proposed lease and tenants to the county. Authorization will only be given if the county is given 30 days to provide an equivalent rent voucher for a client of the Oneida County Department of Family & Community Services. If the county doesn’t provide a tenant with the voucher, then the New York City voucher may be accepted.

The county would also require the city to be a non-tenant party to all such leases and to pay for whatever social services and education the voucher recipient needs.

This article originally appeared on Observer-Dispatch: Oneida County executive order prohibits NYC homeless rent vouchers