from
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/04/02/adams-nypd-homeless-camps-00022473

‘Back to the Giuliani era’: Adams’ order to clear homeless camps ignites
fury in New York
Elected officials and advocates say there's no safe place for homeless
New Yorkers to go after Adams already cleared out the subways and
transit hubs.

New York Mayor Eric Adams participates in the St. Patrick's Day Parade
“We’re not throwing people off the street,” New York City Mayor Eric
Adams said. “You have a right to sleep on the street. You don’t have a
right to build a miniature house.” | Spencer Platt/Getty Images

By JANAKI CHADHA and AMANDA EISENBERG

04/02/2022 07:00 AM EDT

NEW YORK — A series of violent encounters in New York’s subway system
this year pushed the city’s new tough-on-crime mayor to take decisive
action. Eric Adams sent NYPD officers into transit hubs and onto trains
to force homeless people out.

Now the mayor has a new target: Makeshift shelters built up by homeless
people all over New York. He’s again sent city police officers in, this
time to clear out those living in tents, under boxes or in other homes
on the street. Officers have already broken down nearly 250 encampments
and Adams is now launching another round sweeps.

He swears it’s all being done with compassion and care.

“I’m not abandoning anyone. I’m not going to believe that dignity is
living in a cardboard [box], without a shower, without a toilet, living
in terrible living conditions,” Adams said at a City Hall press
conference Wednesday. “It’s just so inhumane.”

But it all seems a bit too familiar to Adams’ detractors, some of whom
are comparing the Democrat to former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a Republican
who in the 1990s criminalized sleeping on the street.

People sleep in a subway station.
People sleep in a subway station in New York, Monday, Feb. 21, 2022. |
Seth Wenig/AP Photo

The new mayor will face an uphill battle in actually compelling people
to leave the streets and go into the city’s shelter system, which is
considered unsafe by many who have taken refuge under bridges, on
sidewalks and in the subways. Elected officials and advocates for
homeless people warn the city lacks capacity to offer people other
options, and say the push is an unwelcome return to failed policies of
the past.

“People have a right to be concerned and we have a responsibility to
address those concerns, but we have to do it in a way that doesn’t take
us back to the Giuliani era where we were solving every problem by
locking up Black and brown folks and criminalizing poverty,” City
Council Member Diana Ayala, a Bronx Democrat whose brother has struggled
with mental illness and homelessness, said in an interview.

Adams, a former NYPD captain, is emerging as a national model for
pro-police Democrats. He’s taken a no-apologies approach to tackling the
post-pandemic problems of rising crime, homelessness and economic
stagnation — and embraced his role on a bigger stage. He’s declared
himself the “new face of the Democratic Party,” and even attracted
President Joe Biden to New York in January to discuss ways to combat gun
violence. The two have since leaned on each other as fellow moderates
confronting a major crime wave as Republicans seize on the issue ahead
of this year’s midterm elections.

The mayor’s push to clear out the encampments, which he said blight the
city, is reminiscent of Giuliani’s crackdown more than two decades ago.
Giuliani deployed the NYPD to arrest anyone who refused shelter, saying
unhoused people didn’t have a right to sleep on the sidewalk.

Adams has not gone that far — he acknowledges the right of people to
sleep on the streets — but has still drawn the line at makeshift
shelters, citing the city’s Sanitation Code, and used cops to clear out
the encampments.

“We’re not throwing people off the street,” Adams said. “You have a
right to sleep on the street. You don’t have a right to build a
miniature house.”

Giuliani’s former mayoral chief of staff, however, sees strong parallels
to his former boss’ approach.

“There are a lot of similarities and I applaud Mayor Adams for taking
this on because he’s doing the right thing for our city, for our
neighborhoods and for our vulnerable homeless population,” said Randy
Mastro, now a partner at the law firm Gibson Dunn.

I’m not abandoning anyone. I’m not going to believe that dignity is
living in a cardboard [box], without a shower, without a toilet, living
in terrible living conditions. It’s just so inhumane.

Mayor Eric Adams

Adams, Mastro noted, is using a nearly identical task force model
enacted by Giuliani — partnering law enforcement with health department
officials and social service workers to get people off the streets and
into supportive housing.

Giuliani’s use of the NYPD to enact his policy survived legal challenges
and is viewed by those on the right as a key factor in driving down
crime, even though most cities across the country saw similar trends in
the ’90s.

Although the city’s shelter population hit 30,000 when Giuliani left
office in 2001 — much higher than the 23,000 people the system housed at
the start of his first term — it’s still significantly lower than the
current count of 45,000.

The city did not tally the number of people living outdoors until 2003,
when officials pegged the number at 1,780 in Manhattan, where the vast
majority of today’s approximately 2,400 unsheltered homeless people
reside. Advocates then and now believe the actual figure is much higher.

To address concerns of police mistreating homeless people, NYPD officers
involved in the new sweeps wear body cameras. Adams promised that there
was “a real process in place” to review the footage.

“I can assure you that these encounters are humane and compassionate,”
NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell added at the press conference.

Ayala said she agrees with the mayor that it is inhumane to keep people
on the streets. But she still strongly objects to police officers being
involved in the process.

On Wednesday, Adams said officials cleared 239 encampments across the
city in the first 12 days, with just five people accepting some form of
assistance in relocating. He did not say how many people were removed
from the makeshift shelters. The bulk of the city visits to encampments
occurred in Manhattan, though workers evaluated 7 sites on Staten
Island, 22 in the Bronx, 27 in Queens and 53 in Brooklyn, according to
City Hall.

People board a subway.
People board a subway on January 19, 2022 in New York City. | Spencer
Platt/Getty Images

The mayor compared the sweep’s potential to his subway plan, which is
intended to move people out of the stations and trains and into
shelters. He noted that the number of people living underground who have
accepted services grew from 22 people to 300 individuals within six weeks.

The mayor initially called for demolishing 180 encampments over two
weeks, and teams charged with carrying out the effort include NYPD
officers, sanitation workers, homeless services staff and parks
department employees. Along just one avenue in Brooklyn, task force
members recovered 537 used needles that may have been for illegal drug
injection, according to a City Hall press release.

Adams said he hopes most people will take up the city’s offer for
shelter and services, but understood that a small portion of people with
mental health issues may take longer to reach. Four people living in the
cleared-out encampments have been hospitalized for mental health issues,
including a man who had been living in a tree in Central Park.

“It’s a process. If you’re on the street, and you no longer believe in
the shelter system, you have to rebuild that trust,” Adams said, adding
that he wants to get everyone a bed who needs one.

The mayor announced the opening of a new facility in the Bronx this week
that’s known as a safe haven, or a type of shelter that has fewer
restrictions and a lower barrier to entry than traditional facilities.
These, along with stabilization beds — which are also targeted toward
unsheltered homeless individuals — have been cited by advocates as key
to bringing people indoors. As part of the mayor’s subway safety plan,
he announced his administration would expand the number of safe haven
and stabilization beds by about 500 in coming weeks.

But advocates say that is still not enough to address the lack of
capacity in that part of the system. The Coalition for the Homeless, a
nonprofit advocacy group, has called on the mayor to open at least 3,000
new safe haven and stabilization beds.

“The stabilization and safe haven system is pretty much full, so they
don’t actually have beds for all these people who they’re saying they’re
going to offer these beds to,” Helen Strom, a director at the nonprofit
legal services and advocacy group Urban Justice Center, said in an
interview. “In general what we’ve seen is outreach will offer to bring
people to the intake for a congregate shelter, which is the same thing
anyone could do at any point.”