From the New York Sun,
Repeat after me: No one has a right to anything just because he happens to need it.
One in six families seeking housing in the city’s strained homeless shelter system is a recent arrival from out of town, out of state, or even out of the country, records show….
New York City is uniquely generous in offering a “right to shelter” to all comers….
The “right to shelter,” established in a series of court rulings and consent decrees in the early 1980s, means that if a family has been in the city for a day, New York is obliged to find them a place to sleep by midnight of the night that they arrive in the Bronx intake center….
“The word must be getting out about New York City’s unique housing policy: you come here, and the taxpayers will pay for you to have an apartment by midnight tonight or pay you $150 a day in fines,” said George McDonald, president of the Doe Fund….