NEW CITY – Rockland County Executive Ed Day has signed a new emergency order in response to the City of New York’s “discriminatory program to establish unlawful city shelters in Rockland County.”
Day said the city’s program is “the very definition of bad government policies and at least in the case of Rockland County, attempted to operate in violation of the rule of law.”
The county executive said Rockland already has a housing crisis “so extreme that Rockland has been unprecedently deputized by the State of New York to take over building and fire code enforcement in the Village of Spring
Valley.”
He said sending busloads of people to the county “that does not have the infrastructure to care for them will likely result in a one-way bus ticket to homelessness.”
Day said each public welfare district is responsible for the assistance and care of any person who lives or is found in its territory, and that includes the City of New York. “This new order bars other municipalities from establishing shelters in Rockland and prohibits them from foisting their own policies, costs, and responsibilities on this county,” he said.
