Since launching nearly two months ago, Mayor Adams’ crackdown on street homeless encampments has only prompted a few dozen people to enter the city’s shelter system, according to data released by the administration Tuesday.
At least 710 encampments have been cleared by the NYPD and city workers since the administration began the street sweeps on March 18, the data provided by Adams’ office shows.
But only 39 people living in those encampments accepted placement at homeless shelters as a result, according to the data, which spanned through this past Sunday.
Manhattan Councilwoman Diana Ayala, who chairs the Council’s General Welfare Committee, which has oversight over the city Department of Homeless Services, said the revelations raise a red flag about the effectiveness of Adams’ encampment campaign.
“We can go out and we can break an encampment, and we cleaned our streets, you know, ‘Hooray for us,'” Ayala said during a Council hearing Tuesday morning.
“But if I am moving those people, and they’re telling me, ‘Council member, I will not go into a congregate setting,’ and I am still moving them and putting them in a congregate setting, then I know that the likelihood that they’re going to leave through the backdoor and they’re going to end up sleeping on another street is very high.”
By “congregate setting,” Ayala was referring to the dorm-style shelters that homeless individuals and their advocates have long said are so unsafe that people rather sleep on the streets or the subways.
Advocates have called for an expansion of so-called safe haven and stabilization shelters, where wrap-around services for homeless people are available.
Adams announced last month that his administration will spend at least $171 million on 1,400 beds at safe haven and stabilization shelters. However, most of those beds are not expected to come online for months.
Meantime, as of Tuesday, only 131 of the city’s current stock of about 2,700 stabilization and safe haven beds were vacant, Gary Jenkins, Adams’ Homeless Services commissioner, testified at the Council hearing.
With that few safe havens and stabilization beds available, Ayala suggested it doesn’t make sense to keep breaking up homeless encampments.
“We’re not working as smartly as we can to really create a comprehensive plan that looks at all the complexities of homelessness,” she said.
An Adams spokesman made the case that 39 homeless shelter placements represent a major improvement as compared to previous encampment removal initiatives.
Between March 18, 2021 and this past March 18, only 26 homeless people accepted shelter placement as a result of encampment crackdowns undertaken by the city — meaning that the Adams administration “achieved 150% of the number of placements as was done in the last year” in the past six weeks, the spokesman said.
In a statement, the mayor lauded the city workers conducting the sweeps.
“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,” he said.
