New York City MayorEric Adams (D) ordered the clear encampments of homeless people across New York City. Police have removed around 150 encampments over two weeks.
“I’m not going to have an inhumane city that allows people to live in an inhumane dangerous environment,” Adams said. In Adams’s citywide plan, the NYPD will offer shelter to the homeless before giving them the warning to vacate.
Although Adams acknowledges that the city doesn’t have the power to stop people from living on the street, he wants to limit the building on encampments. “We cannot tolerate these makeshift, unsafe houses on the side of highways and trees and in front of, you, schools and parks. This is just unacceptable,” Adams said.
The new initiative has generated controversy. Jacquelyn Simone, policy director for the Coalition for the Homeless, said: “if the mayor is serious about helping homeless people, he needs to open thousands of New Safe Haven and stabilization rooms and offer them to those in need.”
Adams responded by saying, “We want them in shelters. The shelters are extremely safe for people who are homeless.”
Adams’s administration so far has opened a Care for the Homeless safe haven in the Bronx.
