Mayor Mamdani must immediately reverse his policy of allowing homeless encampments to proliferate on the streets of NYC. Ten New Yorkers have already died on the streets amid record-breaking cold, and the encampment sweeps initiated by Mayor Adams could well prove a critical tool in averting any more needless fatalities.
With some questions still unanswered about how the 10 died, it’s impossible to draw a straight line between the policy reversal and the deaths. But it stands to simple reason that leaving more New Yorkers on the streets increases the risk of the homeless dying in the cold, even given the emergency “Code Blue” measures that were put into place as the cold descended on the city.
In December, after he won the election, but before he was sworn in, Mamdani said he was going to stop the sweeps of the encampments. But there is nothing humane about letting people sleep in the street. The former policy was the only compassionate response to unsanitary and unsafe lean-to and tents and other makeshift shelters illegally erected on public property such as parks or sidewalks or on empty lots.
There have been sweeps of encampments under the mayoralties of Adams and Bill de Blasio, the man who Mamdani says was the best mayor in recent decades.
Tragically, Mamdani kept his word after taking office on Jan. 1, when the Sanitation Department and NYPD withdrew from removing the encampments, allowing them to stay in place.
When the temperatures plunged and the snow fell last week, the city issued a Code Blue, allowing for people to be taken in against their wishes due to the life-endangering conditions outside. However, the failure to remove any outdoor encampments for more than three weeks prior meant that there were likely more encampments in place with more potential victims of the deadly temperatures.
It is time for Mamdani to restore the sweeps.
When explaining himself in December, Mamdani wrongly framed the issue, saying that: “If you are not connecting homeless New Yorkers to the housing that they so desperately need, then you cannot deem anything you’re doing to be a success. We are going to take an approach that understands its mission is connecting those New Yorkers to housing, whether it’s supportive housing, whether it’s rental housing, whatever kind of housing it is, because what we have seen is the treatment of homelessness as if it is a natural part of living in this city, when in fact, it’s more often a reflection of a political choice being made.”
Connecting to housing is a laudable and important goal.
But it misses the point. Protecting human dignity and human lives is. New York City has a right to shelter; anyone can have a place to stay, so getting people off the streets and out of the cold needs to be an ongoing effort, not an emergency measure when the temperatures drop to potentially fatal levels.
There is also the reality that housing alone is not the issue. There is evidence that a number of those living in encampments are avoiding shelters because they are using illegal drugs or boozing, which are not allowed in the shelters. Others are suffering from serious mental illness.
In December, we warned that letting encampments and their squatters remain would turn New York into West Coast cities like L.A. and San Francisco and Portland, which don’t have a right to shelter. That is terrible enough, but another difference apart from the right to shelter is Mother Nature, as those cities don’t have winter temperatures plunging into the teens and single digits like we do.
There have been 10 deaths so far from the cold. Every death is a failure, but if any of the fatalities are due to encampments that were left in place by Mamdani’s order, it would be even worse.
The encampments must be removed year-round and people dissuaded from living outside. That is the only humane policy.
