Police and sanitation workers are clearing homeless encampments from New York City, days after Mayor Eric Adams said surging crime and homelessness made the city a “laughingstock.”
Mr. Adams, a Democrat, is carrying out a plan to clear 150 encampments over a two-week period, following a similar plan to clear homeless persons from subways, according to The Daily Mail.
“This effort is about taking care of our people and our public spaces because no New Yorker deserves to live on the street,” Mr. Adams said.
The mayor said Sunday he would tackle the problem, alongside crime, like a “wartime general.”
Officials said warnings that camps would be cleared started to be posted on March 17. Media outlets photographed teams clearing encampments beneath the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway on Monday.
Impacted homeless persons and advocates told the Gothamist that clearing the camps won’t improve anything without a corresponding increase in places to stay.
“Making us move doesn’t make less homeless people,” Parker Wolf, 22, told the publication. “We’re gonna be in a different place.”
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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