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Mayor Eric Adams on Tuesday doubled down on his decision to clear homeless encampments across the Big Apple, insisting that city shelters are safe despite years of complaints about dangerous conditions.
Hizzoner made the remarks as police, social and sanitation workers continued to work through a list of roughly 180 encampments where New Yorkers have pitched tents or other ragtag street shelter.
“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 an unrelated press conference in Brooklyn. “I’m not going to ignore what I’m seeing like other people who are willing to do so.
“We’re walking past people that are living on cardboard boxes, in these makeshift, inhumane houses – this is just not right,” he added. “There’s nothing dignified about people living in the streets.”
Adams also decried the dysfunction at his largest social welfare agency, the Human Resources Administration, which The Post revealed was a key contributor to an estimated 2,500 city-funded apartments for the homeless and needy sitting empty.
“I wake up every day and read the paper, some of my best ideas come from some of the good reporting in the city,” the mayor said during a second press conference Tuesday in The Bronx. “When this is placed in my radar, I immediately kicked into action, and we’re going to roll out a formal plan of filling those beds.”
He promised the details would be unveiled in the coming days.
Adams took those questions late Tuesday outside of a new ‘Safe Haven’ shelter that the city is opening in The Bronx, across the street from Lincoln Hospital.
City officials have touted these new shelters as a way to convince chronically homeless New Yorkers to come inside by offering more privacy and more flexible rules than the large barrack-style shelters that typically house single adults.
“It’s smaller, you know, we are much smaller than a typical shelter. We’ve got more intensive services. You can get your health care on site directly here,” said George Nashak, the CEO of nonprofit Care for the Homeless, which runs the city-funded site. “Our primary job is to create a set of better options.”
Advocates for the homeless have assailed Adams’ sweeps since City Hall announced the policy, arguing it’s incumbent on city officials to build a better shelter system that convinces people to come inside — and attempting to force the issue by clearing camps is unproductive.
“Policing and sweeps are harmful, counterproductive strategies that can actually push unsheltered homeless people further away from services,” said Jacquelyn Simone, the policy director for the Coalition for the Homeless, in a statement released Tuesday. “Without offering homeless New Yorkers a better place to go, these are cruel public relations tactics that do not address the real problem.”
Adams attempted to battle back against those perceptions again on Tuesday, claiming that he had only seen good conditions when he’s made spot inspections of city shelters. He pledged to begin the unannounced checks in following another expose by the Post that revealed still-wretched conditions despite years of promises of reforms.
“I’m seeing clean housing for people, where they’re able to get meals, they’re able to take showers,” Adams said.
“The safest place for people who are homeless right now … is a shelter,” he added.
But Adams’s answers Tuesday did little to dissuade the questions and criticism that erupted after City Hall first revealed the effort — which had already been underway for a week — in a late Friday newspaper interview.
Nor have officials provided much sought information on the sweeps yet, including the number of New Yorkers moved and how many of them accepted space in shelters. Instead, they promised a fuller briefing on Wednesday.
The effort has already captured significant media attention. Cameras filmed the scene as sanitation workers dragged away a blue tent from a man who told The Post he had spent two years living under the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway in Brooklyn. The man, 41-year-old Heriberto Medina Jr., said he was left with his bike, a pair of backpacks and white Fila sneakers.
Meanwhile, a homeless man who has been nesting in a Manhattan tree for months was arrested for attacking a Post reporter.
On Tuesday, Adams hit back at critics who have pointed to the wrenching scenes and said he is “proud” of the effort.
“We’re going to give a full profile of exactly the encampments. I believe tomorrow, we’re going to give a full profile,” he told reporters. “I’m just really proud that we were able to do it. I made a commitment.”
Additional reporting by Kevin Sheehan
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