Homeless encampments will no longer be targeted by City Hall when Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani becomes mayor next month.
But Mayor Eric Adams thinks it’s a mistake — cutting a video on social media saying that ending the policy would be a “quality-of-life nightmare.”
What You Need To Know
Mayor Eric Adams cut a video on social media saying that Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani ending the homelessness encampment policy would be a “quality-of-life nightmare”
Since Adams took office, city workers visited 18,653 locations with encampments, according to officials
There are 180 encampments city officials have identified for clearing
“Leaving people to suffer in the cold isn’t just neglectful, it’s a disgrace,” Adams said in the video.
In the video, Adams said that Mamdani would abandon homeless people if he did away with the policy that city workers dismantle tents and encampments.
Mamdani said this week the so-called homeless sweeps will end in his administration.
“We are going to take an approach that understands its mission is to connecting those New Yorkers to housing, whether it’s supportive housing, rental housing, whatever kind of housing it is,” Mamdani said.
Since Adams took office, city workers have visited 18,653 locations with encampments. There were only 115 instances of someone accepting shelter. There are 180 encampments city officials have identified for clearing.
“It’s simply moving people [from] place to place, taking their stuff,” City Comptroller Brad Lander, who is a critic of Adams’ homeless policy, said.
Lander said Mamdani is right to end them, even if that means encampments remain, as long as they do not violate any laws.
“When you use a sweeps approach, you break the trust down,” he said. “We’re often talking about folks who need some trust built, some relationships developed before they’re ready to come inside.”
John Chell, a retired NYPD chief, was involved in Adams’ plan. He said the process was more that rousting homeless people. It involved canvassing and identifying encampments, then coordinating with sanitation and outreach officials.
“Ninety percent of the time if not higher, the homeless did not want the shelter system,” Chell told NY1.
But refusing to stay in a crowded, dirty and dangerous shelter was no excuse to stay in a tent.
“If they didn’t want the help, they couldn’t set up an encampment next to a bank or someone’s business. They had to move,” Chell said.
New York has contended with encampments before.
“There were homeless encampments in public and in Grand Central Station and in subway tunnels in the late ’80s,” Peter Moskos, a professor at CUNY’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said.
Moskos is the author of the book “Back From the Brink: Inside the NYPD and New York City’s Extraordinary 1990s Crime Drop.”
“We solved the problem of tent cities in New York City by saying, ‘You can’t do that,'” he said.
But the shelter system needs to improve.
“People should take advantage of it, and we should make sure that we make those shelters safe and not corrupt,” Moskos said.
Leave a Reply