Mayor Eric Adams and his administration often said that no migrant family is sleeping in the street.

“No child or family is sleeping on the streets of this city because of our actions,” Adams said on NY1’s Morning’s On 1 Friday.

That line was later repeated by Interim Director of the Mayor’s Office of Asylum Seeker Operations Molly Schaeffer.

“Importantly, no families with children have had to sleep out on the street,” she said during her testimony defending the city’s shelter limits.  

While it may be better than the street, we learned this week that some migrants are sleeping in dangerous conditions, like a furniture store in Queens and The Bronx. Dozens of migrants were found sleeping in the packed storefronts — a result of reaching their shelter limit imposed by the city.

The policy is now being challenged by a City Council bill that was reintroduced on Friday that would ban any city agency from imposing a shelter stay limit on any homeless New Yorker.

“Rather than issuing a shelter stay limit for asylum seekers, the city should be finding ways to ensure that asylum seekers can live with dignity. This cruel policy is destabilizing to so many who are already struggling to navigate being here,” Councilmember Diana Ayala said.

The city is now placing 30-and-60-day shelter limits on single migrants and families in a bid to drive down costs.

As of late February, over 55,000 30-day notices have been given out to single migrants, while over 9,000 60-day notices have been given to families.

“When we are dealing with an influx of 1,000 to 5,000 people every week and we currently have over 64,000 migrants in our care, we have to make hard choices,” Schaeffer said.

City officials blamed a lack of federal help in the crisis.

“A national humanitarian crisis deserves a whole of government approach that addresses needs municipal governments alone cannot meet,” Schaeffer said.

Local lawmakers have criticized the policy for evicting new arrivals into the street as migrants are forced to join a long waitlist for a new shelter placement.

“Everyone is offered a place indoors outside of the elements while they wait overnight for a bed placement,” Schaeffer said.

When city officials were pushed about conditions at the overnight sites, they refused to answer.

“So do they have amenities like beds or cots?,” Councilmember Shahana Hanif said amid the hearing.

To which Schaeffer replied: “I want to take a step back here because I think that we’re going a little down a rabbit hole.”

At the hearing, two migrants who arrived within the last five months spoke about the difficulty of getting a new bed placement.

The men said in French that at times waiting for a new bed can take anywhere between four to 10 days or more. The men said they had already stayed in three to four shelters due to the policy.

One of them flashed his waitlist bracelet, showing that he still has no place to stay.    

Meanwhile, the Adams administration said on Friday that rolling back the shelter limit policy would cost billions of dollars.

Since instituting the limits, the administration has saved $1.7 million.