This is similar to efforts made in other liberal metropolises who previously allowed such encampments.
The initiative was revealed by Mayor Eric Adams in a interview with The New York Times, but he provided only limited details. This comes one month after Adams announced that he would eliminate homeless people from the city’s sprawling subway system. It was in response to aggressive behavior and assaults.
He told the Times that he was going to remove the encampments from his street and place people in healthy living situations with wraparound services. “I am telling my city agencies block by block, district to district, to identify the encampments and then to execute a plan to provide services to those who are in those encampments, and then to demolish them.”
Adams didn’t say where the people who live in the encampments would be moved, but he acknowledged that officials can’t force anyone to move to a shelter. He anticipated that the effort would begin in two weeks.
He stated that “we can’t stop someone from sleeping on the streets based on law” and added, “We’re not going against that law.” “But, you can’t build miniature houses out of cardboard on streets. That’s inhumane.”
According to the most recent estimates, January 2021, approximately 1,100 people lived in parks and streets. This number is often criticized by advocates as an underestimate. The shelters are where most of the approximately 50,000 homeless residents live.
Advocates for homeless people have stated that removing street encampments will only result in people moving from one place to the next.
Increasing numbers of cities in the United States such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. have taken steps to eliminate encampments and address homelessness that were unheard of a few years ago.