City sweeps have prompted just 39 homeless New Yorkers to shelter since March
Mayor Eric Adams’ encampment sweeps are prompting an average of less than one homeless New Yorker per day to enter the city’s shelter system, new figures released by City Hall reveal.
All told, only 39 New Yorkers have opted to come inside over the roughly six weeks since the mayor began sending city workers to clear out the makeshift living spaces and attempt to convince people living on the streets to come indoors, according to data released Tuesday.
“I have said since we started this initiative that every New Yorker deserves dignity, and we are demonstrating that this is possible,” Adams said in a prepared statement.
“Our teams are working professionally and diligently every day to make sure that every New Yorker living on the street knows they have a better option while ensuring that everyone who lives in or visits our city can enjoy the clean public spaces we all deserve.”
Experts were unimpressed by the meager amount of homeless people who Adams’ efforts had prompted to accept shelter from late March to Sunday, and called on the mayor to overhaul his tactics on the matter.
“In any imagination, 39 is not a lot, which is evidence this approach is not working,” said Catherine Trapani, the executive director of Homeless Services United. “This isn’t the way to do it.
“No one is saying we prefer encampments, nobody is saying that is a good way to live,” she added. “But what we are saying is that in order to get people to come in, you have to have something ready for them.”
Judith Goldiner, the top attorney at the Legal Aid Society, declared the encampment crackdown had “failed” after the release of the figures 44 days after it launched.
“Their strategy to get people off the streets has completely failed,” she fumed.
“You need to offer people more real options — more safe havens, more permanent housing,” Goldiner explained. “And if you’re not going to do that, you’re not going to get people off the streets.”
The data’s release came just ahead of a Quinnipiac University poll Wednesday which showed that 56% of registered voters in New York City disapprove of Adam’s “handling” of homelessness while just 31% approve of it.
“I think most New Yorkers agree with his sentiments on wanting to do something, but I think most New Yorkers also disagree with the way … this has been handled,” said City Councilwoman Diana Ayala (D- East Harlem), who chairs the general welfare committee, which oversees the city’s homeless services agency.
On March 18, Adams started dispatching city workers to dismantle homeless encampments in the five boroughs.
Crews from municipal agencies that include the NYPD, Department of Homeless Services and Department of Sanitation have recently attempted to rid the Big Apple of temporary living spaces assembled with mattresses, tents and cardboard boxes — with the stated intention of persuading the down-on-their luck residents of them to instead reside in city-run homeless shelters.
The newly released data shows that teams of municipal workers had as of Sunday contacted 264 people living in encampments during 733 “location visits.” Those tours resulted in 710 “clean sites” and 63 “active” encampments, meaning they have not yet been cleared, data provided by the mayor’s office showed.
Those numbers include sites city workers have observed more than once, and are not separate make-do living spaces. A City Hall rep also cautioned the figures frequently change day-to-day, representing a “momentary snapshot.”
Those efforts have been coupled with a pledge to dedicate more than $170 million toward homeless services including 900 new “safe haven” beds — located in small facilities with few regulations about who can stay in them, specifically designed for New Yorkers living on the street. The relatively small living spaces offer on-site medical, mental-health and substance-abuse services.
Additionally, Adams’ executive budget seeks to raise the amount of New York City’s major construction budget dedicated to the Housing Authority and Department of Housing Preservation and Development from around $1.7 billion to $2.2 billion annually.
Even as Department of Homeless Services’ shelters have been the target of years of complaints about dangerous and dilapidated conditions, Adams has in recent months insisted they are safe, declaring that living on mattresses, cardboard boxes and under tents in public spaces is “inhumane” and isn’t “dignified.”
“We cannot tolerate these makeshift, unsafe houses on the side of highways, in trees, in front of schools, in parks. This is just not acceptable, and it’s something I’m just not going to allow to happen,” he told reporters during a press conference in March.
On March 30, city officials identified 244 such locations and revealed that just five people agreed to head into a shelter in the first 12 days of the program.
The encampment sweeps came after Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul rolled out a pair of multi-agency initiatives — one announced in January and another in February — to prevent the Big Apple’s homeless population from sleeping on the subway.
As part of his strategies to reduce homelessness, Adams has also repeatedly vowed to fill the 2,500 apartments for homeless New Yorkers who need mental health care and other social services that The Post reported in March had been left empty due to a “bureaucratic nightmare.”
The number of unused units is almost identical to the roughly 2,400 New Yorkers found to be living on city streets or underground in the subway system during the most recent federal tally released in January 2021.
But despite Adams’ promises, the city Human Resources Administration has since filled just 200 of those vacant apartments, The Post reported last month.
