McCain v. Koch is a landmark lawsuit that established the right to shelter for homeless children and families in New York City, building off of Legal Aid’s historic win on behalf of the Coalition for the Homeless in Callahan v. Carey, which established the legal right to shelter for homeless adults. Prior to McCain, many homeless families, 70 percent of which “were [homeless] due to fires or vacate orders served because of serious structural problems or deterioration of their buildings,” were summarily denied emergency shelter, without any process. With nowhere else to turn, families were forced to sleep in parks or abandoned buildings. For those families who were not turned away, their options were limited to sleeping on the floors of welfare offices or placement in “welfare hotels,” and where rooms were infested with rodents and bugs, and where the heat and hot water were so infrequent that the two-year-old daughter of a named plaintiff had to be hospitalized for pneumonia.

In 1986, the First Department held unanimously that all homeless families have the legal right to emergency shelter. Subsequent decisions have upheld the power of the courts to set minimum standards of decency and habitability for emergency shelters, McCain v. Koch, 70 N.Y.2d 109 (1987), and to compel officials to comply with those court-ordered standards. McCain v. Koch, 136 A.D.2d 473 (1st Dep't 1988); McCain v. Dinkins, 84 N.Y.2d 216 (1994).

Legal Aid subsequently entered into a stipulation with the City, establishing the right to decent shelter for families with minor children in 2008, in Boston v. City of New York, Index No. 402295/08.