The Legal Aid Society and the Coalition for the Homeless, following a court-supervised mediation, announced a settlement with the City to end the government’s legal challenge to New York’s long-standing Right to Shelter for single adults, established under Callahan v. Carey in 1981.

The Legal Aid Society intervened when the Adams Administration, faced with the arrival of tens of thousands of new New Yorkers seeking better lives for themselves, threatened to take away the Right to Shelter Legal Aid established more than 40 years ago, The organization announced a settlement with the City that, while allowing some limits on shelter stays that had always existed in the 1981 Callahan consent decree, maintained the fundamental right for all New Yorkers to have roofs over their heads.