NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- A multiagency task force focused on humanely getting homeless people off the streets of New York City cleaned over 200 encampments in less than two weeks, and convinced five people to receive services, Mayor Eric Adams and other officials announced Wednesday.
The task force started March 18 and includes the city departments of parks, sanitation, police and homeless services, said Meera Joshi, the deputy mayor for operations who oversees two of the agencies, sanitation and parks.
Joshi said this is not a “rushed job” and that teams are reaching out to homeless people at the sites to gain their trust. She said that first the Department of Homeless Services surveys an area, then posts a notice at least 24 hours before cleanup and engages with clients if they’re onsite.
Since the beginning of the sweeping effort 12 days ago, 244 sites have been visited and 239 “are now cleaned,” Joshi said, noting it’s an ongoing effort.
“I want to emphasize this is not a one-and-done,” Joshi said. “This takes constant communication and trust and relationship with those people that we’re trying to bring in and connect with services.”
Officials said the first phase of the effort wrapped up Wednesday ahead of schedule and that a second phase beginning Thursday will involve recanvassing areas and scheduling the next round of site visits. The task force plans to return to the sites that remain active and haven't yet been fully cleaned to complete that work.
It’s unclear how many people were initially in the visited encampments, but Adams said only five people have accepted services since the effort began 12 days ago.
However, the mayor said “we know those numbers are going to increase” as the city starts handing out brochures to dispel the perceptions people “have in their heads of what a shelter system looks like.”
“We want to show them what it looks like to have wraparound services,” including a clean bathroom and mental health services, he said.
The mayor pointed to a similar homeless outreach initiative in the subway system this year, where only 22 people initially accepted services—a number that has since grown to over 300 people.
“We have a long way to go, but we are getting there,” Adams said.
“We’re rebuilding trust,” he said. “This city is now engaged in a multiagency mission with compassion and caring, taking our time, not rushing through this, but being compassionate to people experiencing terrible circumstances.”
The mayor pointed to a photo of one encampment where he said 500 hypodermic needles were found. “I’m supposed to allow this to stay?” he said. “I don’t subscribe to that.”
NYPD Deputy Chief Brian McGinn said no children or families were found at the encampments. The largest share of sites, 85 of them, were found in Manhattan South, with the rest of the locations spread out across the city. Four summonses were issued during the effort, all of them related to erecting structures, McGinn said.
Among the encampments dismantled was a makeshift treehouse at Manhattan’s Riverbank State Park. Crews took it down Monday, but not before the 44-year-old man living there allegedly attacked a New York Post reporter capturing the eviction. The man was arrested and later released by a Manhattan Criminal Court judge.
Officials said that man and three other people were hospitalized for mental health issues.
After a new Safe Haven site with 80 beds opened on Morris Avenue in the Bronx on Tuesday, Adams said there are now 350 beds available and that the city is “going to continue to fill those beds.” They're out of 500 additional low-barrier beds announced in the mayor's Subway Safety Plan this year.
While visiting the Bronx location Tuesday, Adams defended the takedown of encampments, saying, “We’ve normalized dysfunctionality in our city, and I’m not going to ignore what I’m seeing.”
Some outreach organizations have said many people don’t like the shelter system because of poor conditions and limited services. And efforts to remove the encampments have been criticized as counterproductive strategies that can push unsheltered people further away from services.
Adams initially disclosed the initiative in an interview with The New York Times last week but provided few details. It comes a month after he announced the push to remove homeless people from the city's sprawling subway system in response to assaults and other aggressive behavior.
“We’re going to rid the encampments off our street and we’re going to place people in healthy living conditions with wraparound services,” he told the Times. “I’m telling my city agencies to do an analysis block by block, district by district, identify where the encampments are, then execute a plan to give services to the people who are in the encampments, then to dismantle those encampments.”
Adams did not say where people living in the encampments would go, and acknowledged officials cannot force anyone to go to a homeless shelter.
“We can’t stop an individual from sleeping on the street based on law, and we’re not going to violate that law,” he said. “But you can’t build a miniature house made out of cardboard on the streets. That’s inhumane.”
In its most recent estimate in January 2021, the city said about 1,100 people were living in parks and on the streets — a number seen by many advocates as an undercount. Most of the roughly 50,000 homeless people in the city stay in shelters.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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