NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — Mayor Eric Adams on Tuesday vehemently defended his administration's move to tear down homeless encampments across New York City.
Reports of the makeshift shelters getting swept are springing up around the five boroughs, most recently under the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway in Williamsburg with images showing tents and mattresses being thrown into the back of a garbage truck.
"We're walking past people that are living on cardboard boxes in these makeshift, inhumane houses, this is just not right," Adams said at an unrelated press conference Tuesday. "We've normalized dysfunctionality in our city and I am not going to ignore what I'm seeing."
The city quietly began clearing out the encampments on March 17 and the mayor insists his order is about doing better by the homeless population.
"People should not live on the streets where they can't take care of themselves," Adams said.
The mayor insisted the move to dismantle the makeshift shelters from city streets is not about optics.
"When I hear people say to me 'Why are you are you taking down the encampments? Are you doing it because you want the city to look better?' No, I want us to do better," Adams said. "I made a commitment that I'm going to give people the treatment they deserve with the safe haven beds and I'm going to live up to that."
The mayor did, however, express how different some areas look once encampments are gone.
"And you have to see some of these encampments and you have to see the difference of just removing an encampment, what it did for that entire block," Adams said.
Advocates have sharply criticized the plan saying the city needs to offer better options than overcrowded and often dangerous shelters.
The mayor conceded the shelter system may not be right for all.
"We know that those who are dealing with mental health illnesses, that they've been assaulted, they've been preyed upon, we're aware of that," Adams said, adding that his teams are going out with brochures trying to sell the homeless on safe haven beds and more private accommodations.
"We have to go out on the streets and tell them we're not putting you back in a place where you were treated unfairly, we have a new model of where we're going to take and we're going to show them pictures," Adams said.
The mayor said he has visited shelters and conducted spot checks.
"I'm seeing clean housing for people where they're able to get meals, they're able to take showers," Adams said. "Yes, we're going to continue to do better, but it's better than sleeping on the street with no bathroom, no shower, no conditions that are suitable so those advocates who believe I'm doing the wrong thing, come and see me, let's do this together, but I'm not going to allow people to sleep on the streets in cardboards."
Adams estimates there are about 180 encampments across the city. He is promising no one will lose their belongings in these sweeps.
The city cannot legally remove people from the streets, but City Hall says the makeshift tent shelters that many homeless people live in are a violation of the city's sanitation code.
"In the city we cannot stop people from living on the streets, but 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 not going to allow to happen," Adams said.
Adams on Tuesday afternoon was scheduled to cut the ribbon on a new safe haven homeless shelter located at 528 Morris Ave. in the Bronx.
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