NEW YORK (1010WINS) -- Mayor Eric Adams quietly started a two-week blitz to clear homeless New Yorkers out of a list of 150 encampments that the city identified and attempt to offer services.
The campaign started March 17, but Adams didn’t address the plan until this weekend, according to 1010 WINS.
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.
Josiah Haken, CEO of the non-profit organization City Relief, says tearing down the makeshift shelters used by homeless people is not the answer.
"It's equivalent to eviction. It's equivalent to if someone came to my house and just started grabbing my things,” Haken told 1010 WINS reporter Eileen Lehpamer.
A spokesperson for Adams said the initiative is meant to offer homeless people support options available to them including “wrap-around” programs that are designed as holistic approaches to the problems facing homeless New Yorkers.
"I'm not going to have an inhumane city that allows people to live in an inhumane, dangerous environment," said Adams.
In his speculative budget, Adams is seeking to cut the funding of all city agencies except the NYPD by 3%, including that of the Department of Homeless Services.
The NYPD has a history of destroying homeless peoples’ property when carrying out sweeps.
When the police raided the hybrid protest/homeless encampment occupying City Hall Park in 2020, onlookers captured footage of sanitation workers and cops throwing out the tents and belongings of the homeless people living there.
The Adams administration says police officers on the sweep teams are wearing body cameras, and sanitation workers are taking care to log personal belongings.
The teams have also been posting notices that encampments are slated for removal 24 hours in advance.
James Winans, the President and CEO of the Bowery Mission, says it's no easy task to convince some people to come off the streets.
"For many people, a prior experience of trauma or violence in the shelter system keeps them from trying that option again," said Winans.
Shams DaBaron, a formerly homeless man turned advocate, told 1010 WINS he's supportive of the Mayor's plan, because he believes that in the long term it will help expose people to social services and individualized housing instead of just putting them into the shelter system.
"I believe housing is a human right," said DaBaron, but he added that it would be traumatizing if someone refuses help and has their street shelter removed.
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