Mayor Takes Aim At Homeless Encampments To Dismay Of Advocates

NEW YORK, NY — A plan to clear encampments where homeless New Yorkers live from city streets is inflaming fears among advocates who say Mayor Eric Adams is taking aim at unhoused city dwellers without giving them a safe place to go.

The clean-up blitz, first reported by the New York Times, aims to clear out 150 encampments within two weeks and started with visits to the makeshift homes on Friday, March 18. Teams of cops and city officials were tasked with posting 24-hour notices at the encampments before visiting the next day to clean up the site and offer social services to the person living there, according to the mayor's office.

The initiative — the first step in a larger encampment clean-up — has outraged advocates already concerned about a similar plan under Mayor Eric Adams to remove homeless New Yorkers from the city's subway system.

"Once again, Mayor Adams is demonstrating his lack of understanding of unsheltered homeless New Yorkers," the Coalition for the Homeless's Jacquelyn Simone said in a statement. "If the Mayor is serious about helping homeless people, he needs to open thousands of New Safe Haven and stabilization rooms and offer them to those in need, not take away what little protection they have from the elements and other dangers on the street."

Adams, as with his Subway Safety Plan, has contended the encampment clean-up will help connect homeless New Yorkers with services while making New York City safer and cleaner.

Teams visiting the encampments include officials from the Department of Social Services, the NYPD, the Department of Sanitation and the Parks Department, according to his office.

“This effort is about taking care of our people and our public spaces because no New Yorker deserves to live on the street," Adams said. "We are breaking down siloes and working together across government to keep New Yorkers safe and our streets clean."

But homeless advocates doubt Adams' plan adequately addresses what they say is the greater issue; that many unhoused individuals don't have anywhere else to go.

Under the subway safety plan, similar teams that have been canvassing the city's subway platforms, train cars and end-of-the-line stations have connected 312 people with a spot in a shelter, according to the mayor's office data for the first month of the initiative.

That number represents a minuscule portion of the 18,200 interactions the teams have had with people since being deployed to the subways. The teams engaged with an average of 650 people in need each night in the 28-day period, though the mayor's office has noted that not all people included in the data are experiencing homelessness.

Meanwhile, a crackdown on subway rules — included in the safety plan — has resulted in 6,828 summonses, 719 arrests and 1,981 people being ejected from the subway system during the first month, according to the data.

The MTA and NYPD were told to focus on those using the subway for anything but transportation under the plan, including those sleeping, smoking, drinking or behaving aggressively in the transit system.