{"id":3401,"date":"2022-03-31T22:01:05","date_gmt":"2022-03-31T22:01:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/linksus.net\/new-york-city-clears-239-homeless-camps-only-5-people-move-to-shelters-the-new-york-times\/"},"modified":"2022-03-31T22:01:05","modified_gmt":"2022-03-31T22:01:05","slug":"new-york-city-clears-239-homeless-camps-only-5-people-move-to-shelters-the-new-york-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/2022\/03\/31\/new-york-city-clears-239-homeless-camps-only-5-people-move-to-shelters-the-new-york-times\/","title":{"rendered":"New York City Clears 239 Homeless Camps. Only 5 People Move to Shelters. – The New York Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

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In the subways, nearly 80 people a week accepted shelter over a four-week period, Mayor Adams said. Officials have not yet said how many stayed off the street.
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By <\/span>Andy Newman<\/a><\/span> and Michael Gold<\/a><\/span>
Results so far are mixed on New York City\u2019s effort to move homeless people out of the subway system and street encampments<\/a> and into shelters, Mayor Eric Adams said Wednesday.
The mayor, who has called the initiatives crucial to the city\u2019s recovery from the pandemic and to addressing perceptions that it had grown less safe, and his staff said that sanitation workers in partnership with the police had cleared 239 encampments in 12 days.
But only five people at those sites agreed to go to homeless shelters, a sign that most of them may remain outdoors and many were likely to rebuild their makeshift camps.
During the first four weeks of the push to clear the subways<\/a>, nearly 80 people per week accepted placement in shelters, according to city figures \u2014 a jump from about 22 per week in January, before Mr. Adams put his subway safety plan<\/a> into effect.
But city statistics for January showed that more than two-thirds of the people in the subway who agreed to go to shelters had already left them by the end of the month. City officials declined to immediately say how many of those newly referred to shelters under the city\u2019s latest initiative remained there.
Mr. Adams cautioned New Yorkers that the programs will take time and that a social problem that has bedeviled generations of mayors would not be solved overnight.
\u201cThis is the first inning of a nine-inning game,\u201d he said at a news conference at City Hall. \u201cI\u2019m not concerned about striking out. I\u2019m not concerned about someone hitting our pitches. I\u2019m concerned about the end of this game. And when this game is over, we\u2019re going to have a city far better than the dysfunctional city that we\u2019ve witnessed for far too long.\u201d
His comments seemed aimed at ratcheting down expectations he set in February, when he said of the decades-long practice of people sleeping on trains and subway platforms, \u201cThose days are over<\/a>.\u201d This month he suggested that he would have the city cleared<\/a> of street encampments within two weeks.
Of the people on the street who did not agree to go to shelters, Mr. Adams said that \u201csome went back home\u201d to stay with loved ones and \u201csome went to different locations.\u201d Advocates have said that the cleanups often have the effect of simply pushing people and their possessions from one outdoor spot to another.
Meera Joshi, the deputy mayor for operations, who appeared with Mr. Adams, stressed that the encampment removals were \u201cnot a \u2018one and done,\u2019\u201d in part because it takes \u201cconstant communication and trust and relationship\u201d to persuade people leery of the shelter system to head inside.
Advocates for homeless people say that the city\u2019s practice of sending out cleanup teams of police, sanitation workers and homeless-outreach workers and sometimes throwing away people\u2019s belongings \u2014 something that the city denies occurs \u2014 breaks that trust.
Mr. Adams emphasized that the city was also in the process of opening 500 beds in specialized shelters that have fewer restrictions, more on-site services and in some cases more privacy than the traditional dormlike shelters that many people who live on the street and shelter in the subway reject.
On Tuesday, he presided at the ribbon-cutting of one such shelter, a so-called safe haven in the Bronx that offers 80 beds, an on-site health clinic, substance-abuse treatment and no curfew.
\u201cYou can\u2019t get this on the A train overnight,\u201d he said at the opening. \u201cYou can\u2019t get this sleeping in Times Square. You can\u2019t get this sleeping in a cardboard box. You can\u2019t get this sleeping in a tree in the park. You don\u2019t deserve that. You deserve this.\u201d
Jacquelyn Simone, the policy director for the Coalition for the Homeless, said on Wednesday that the city should shift its focus away from enforcement and more toward accelerating the creation of housing.
\u201cPrivate rooms and permanent housing,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s what people want. You don\u2019t have to do heavy-handed policing to convince someone to come in off the streets if you\u2019re actually offering them an option that is safer and better than the streets.\u201d
Ms. Simone noted that many of the 500 specialized beds Mr. Adams cited were already in the pipeline under his predecessor, Bill de Blasio. Mr. de Blasio built about 2,400 such beds during his eight-year tenure.
Likewise, Mr. Adams\u2019s crackdown on encampments is largely a continuation of a practice that ramped up sharply during Mr. de Blasio\u2019s last year in office, when the city averaged more than 500 cleanups per month.
When questioned about how his approach differed, Mr. Adams demurred. \u201cI\u2019m not sure what he did,\u201d he said. \u201cThat was the previous administration.\u201d
Dan Biederman, the president of the 34th Street Partnership, a business improvement district in Manhattan, said that the business owners and property owners within the district generally supported the mayor\u2019s efforts around homelessness and public safety.
\u201cMost of us who are in the fray believe it can\u2019t just be outreach,\u201d Mr. Biederman, who is also president of the Bryant Park Corporation, said. \u201cYou can\u2019t have encampments on the street and have people feel safe.\u201d
He also said that he believed Mr. Adams\u2019s plan to tackle subway safety would help alleviate \u201cthe climate of fear that is affecting a lot of people who work in Manhattan and stopping some people from coming back to the office.\u201d
Mr. Adams\u2019s presentation included many visuals. One was a photo showing dozens of needles and syringes and other drug paraphernalia \u2014 part of a haul of more than 500 needles across four campsites that city officials said were collected under the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.
He also displayed a brochure that will be handed out to people on the streets and subways that shows a tidy bed and a sparkling bathroom beneath the words, \u201cDo you need a place to sleep tonight?\u201d
While it is difficult to accurately count the number of people living unsheltered, the city\u2019s most recent estimate, conducted in January 2021<\/a>, tallied about 1,300 people sleeping in subways and about 1,100 on the streets. Many advocates consider the estimate to be an undercount.
The vast majority of the city\u2019s approximately 50,000 homeless people live in shelters \u2014 about 30,000 in family shelters, and about 18,000 in shelters for single adults.
Transit officials have stressed that the subway is not intended for public shelter and have said that the number of people seeking refuge there raises concerns among some riders<\/a> and interferes with daily operations.
At a news conference on Wednesday, Janno Lieber, the chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the subway system, commended the steps being taken to steer homeless people off trains. But he also acknowledged that some of those being referred to services were likely to return to public transit.
\u201cThere will be some folks who, God willing, get out of the situation they\u2019re in in a permanent way, and being realistic, there will be others that don\u2019t,\u201d Mr. Lieber said. \u201cIt\u2019s just too early to say what those percentages are and whether we\u2019re actually making a dent in this situation.\u201d
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