N.Y.C. Halts Plan to Move Homeless People From Hotels After Legal Filing

The Legal Aid Society filed a motion accusing the city of violating the rights of people with disabilities.

New York City’s effort to move more than 8,000 homeless people from pandemic hotels to barrackslike group shelters ground to a halt on Friday morning, after the Legal Aid Society filed a motion accusing the city of violating the rights of people with respiratory conditions and other medical and psychological problems. The decision stopped one transfer mid-move. In the pouring rain, women with walkers who had been staying at the Hotel at Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan trooped onto a converted school bus headed to a shelter, only to be told to get off and rejoin the crowd in the lobby that had assembled, each with their belongings crammed into two city-issued jumbo trash bags. Some women embraced and wept with relief. Others were furious. “All of this for nothing!” Thyessa Williams said.