The Adams administration spent $3.5 million clearing 2,300 homeless encampments from public spaces between January to September last year, according to new numbers released by the administration on Friday.
But only 114 of the 3,500 homeless people displaced by the clearances were moved into temporary shelter, according to the data. No one was placed in permanent housing, according to the report.
City Hall spokesperson William Fowler said the new reporting requirement doesn’t tell a full story or consider when people may go to shelter before or after a sweep.
“But let’s be clear: We know there is still more work to be done. That is why Mayor [Eric] Adams announced an ambitious $650 million investment in his State of the City address to tackle street homelessness, including an additional 900 new safe haven beds to get more New Yorkers the help they deserve,” Fowler said. “Mayor Adams has been clear that there is no dignity in sleeping on the streets, and there is no moral superiority in just walking by and doing nothing.”
City officials say it takes several attempts to convince people living on the street to accept shelter and with the city’s vacancy rate hovering at 1.4% housing options are limited. Obtaining more permanent housing options or housing vouchers also requires paperwork and identification and can’t be done the same day on site, officials said.
City Councilmember Sandy Nurse said the fact that no one affected is now in permanent housing shows that clearing the encampments is a failure.
“ If you cannot show that you have permanently housed a single individual, there is no way you can look at this and say this is a success,” said Nurse, who sponsored legislation to get the city to detail the sweeps’ frequency, cost and effectiveness.
Although former mayors have also conducted sweeps, Mayor Eric Adams ordered an interagency collaboration led by the NYPD to get people off the streets and connected to services. More than 10,000 city workers participated in the sweeps, which included the sanitation department to dismantle any physical structures or tents and the NYPD, according to the data.
Employees from the parks, sanitation and homeless services departments, as well as police, respond to complaints to clear tents, cardboard boxes or encampments in public spaces and offer services to homeless people on site.
The reports show the sanitation department made up the bulk of the cost and police were involved in all but one of the sweeps.
The data is required under a City Council law passed in 2023 and is expected to be released quarterly. The first report was due in May but city officials said the request was unprecedented and required more time to put together. The data discloses the agencies involved in the sweeps, how often the sweeps happen and what services were offered to homeless individuals.
The data also show 71% of the sweeps occurred at locations that were previously cleared.
Gothamist previously obtained some records on the clearances that showed some sites that operated as street vendor locations were visited nearly 200 times . But other street corners where homeless individuals congregated were also cleared multiple times, the records showed.
Fowler said 97% of homeless New Yorkers reside in city shelters and the Adams administration has helped 8,000 people off the subways and into temporary housing through other outreach efforts.
Homeless advocates have long argued the city’s sweeps are ineffective and can be traumatizing for the people involved, whose few possessions are often thrown away.
“They should be using all of these city resources and millions of dollars to give homes to people but instead they use it to push and kick them around in the streets,” said Eduardo Ventura, who has previously been cleared out in the city’s sweeps and is a member of the advocacy group Safety Net Activists. “We need to help and care for homeless people and house them, not waste the city’s resources on harming them.”
Nurse said the city’s next mayor must focus on eliminating barriers to permanent housing because Adams’ strategy isn’t working.
“ The mayor has focused almost 100% of his public safety approach, which includes the street homeless removal strategy, as an aesthetic and cosmetic approach,” she said. “Out of sight, out of mind.”
