tents and makeshift shelters<\/a> now extend from 34th Street to 46th Street along 11th Avenue, a worrisome eyesore for local workers and residents as well as tourists lining up to visit the popular Intrepid Museum \u2014 with City Hall turning a blind eye and NYPD cops zipping by and doing nothing.<\/p>\nA gross homeless encampment has drown unchecked along Manhattan\u2019s West Side, The Post has learned. Luiz C. Ribeiro for NY Post<\/p>\n
City Hall and the NYPD has turned a blind eye to the West Side shantytown that now covers 12 city blocks. Luiz C. Ribeiro for NY Post<\/p>\n
\u201cWe cant get rid of them,\u201d one city parks enforcement officer said Sunday. \u201cThese ones here are stealing everything. They stole our key for the hose. They stole our ladder. They take what they can. And there are escorts in there too. Prostitutes. I see them, they\u2019re right there.<\/p>\n
\u201cDefinitely getting worse,\u201d she said. \u201cPeople stopped parking here. People are scared to park here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Industrious vagrants lounge on stolen couches, display pricey electronics and other goods \u2014 including Broadway theater lights and high-end telescopes \u2014 and even peddle drugs to sex workers who also ply their trade inside the shantytown or filthy public bathrooms, locals said.<\/p>\n
At one tent sex workers regularly stopped by throughout the day for customers or drugs \u2014 or both.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is crazy,\u201d said one supervisor at the nearby Jacob Javits Center. \u201cThe cops and the sanitation guys and the outreach guys, they clean up one spot and after that day, the next day they\u2019re over here. Then they\u2019re over there. They\u2019re kind of just spreading around.<\/p>\n
Tourists lining up to visit the popular Intrepid Museum now have to stand alongside a smelly shantytown. Luiz C. Ribeiro for NY Post<\/p>\n
Trash strewn along the sidewalk from the growing West Side homeless encampment exposed by The Post. Luiz C. Ribeiro for NY Post<\/p>\n
\u201cThe scariest parts are on 36th and 37th right now,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s just heroin addicts.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt stinks,\u201d a Javits maintenance worker added. \u201cThey were setting up in the park at 3 this morning and it\u2019s just too much. It\u2019s getting bad again, very bad.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe kicked them out, now they\u2019re over here,\u201d he said. \u201cOne thing is for sure though, there are more today than there were last month, that\u2019s for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Post blew the whistle on the lawless encampment in a report on Friday,<\/p>\n
One vagrant went so far as to call Mayor Zohran Mamdani \u201cawesome\u201d for allowing the unsanitary encampment to thrive and halting police raids that once cleared out the unsightly settlements.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, regular NYPD patrols drove by the scene but never stopped, while officials at City Hall did not immediately respond to a request for comment. <\/p>\n
The Post first blew the whistle on the unsightly homeless shantytown growing on the West Side.<\/p>\n
But New Yorkers have noticed \u2014 a review of city records show that 311 calls complaining about vagrants in the area spiked to 48 this year, up from 40 in 2025. <\/p>\n
The records show that 28 of the 48 calls so far this year were for a homeless person needing assistance, while 20 were over the West Side encampment. Thirty calls came just last month, and eight this month.<\/p>\n
Of the 40 calls to 311 from the neighborhood last year, 36 were for assistance and just four were over the unsightly encampment.<\/p>\n
Big Apple civic and business leaders also griped that it\u2019s not a good look.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost people would agree that leaving people on the street indefinitely isn\u2019t compassion, it\u2019s neglect,\u201d said Steve Fulp, CEO for the nonprofit Partnership for the City of New York. \u201cWe\u2019ve seen in cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco that letting encampments grow unchecked fails the homeless and erodes quality of life for everyone else. <\/p>\n
A vagrant snoozes on a stolen chair in the West Side encampment that has continued to grow. Luiz C. Ribeiro for NY Post<\/p>\n
Locals say the encampment between 34th and 46th streets has grown unchecked in recent weeks. Luiz C. Ribeiro for NY Post<\/p>\n
\u201cThe right approach for the city pairs real services with the timely actual removal of encampments that pose safety risks,\u201d Fulp said. \u201cWe aren\u2019t seeing that here and these encampments can grow quickly if a balanced policy isn\u2019t pursued which is the concern here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cristyne Nicholas, chair of the New York State Tourism Advisory Council, who was appointed to the post by Gov. Kathy Hochul, said the troublesome shantytown \u201cdoesn\u2019t put New York tourism in a positive light.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Intrepid Museum is one of New York\u2019s greatest tourist attractions, drawing millions of visitors each year,\u201d she said. \u201cTourists are forced to walk around squalor and stench. I hope the mayor focuses on this, as he\u2019s promoted tourism during the World Cup. He understands tourism.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe there\u2019s a disconnect here\u201d added Christopher, the former head of the city\u2019s tourism agency. \u201cWe want visitors to feel safe and welcome.\u201d<\/p>\n
Additional reporting by Nicole Rosenthal<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A grotesque homeless encampment continues to expand on Manhattan\u2019s West Side and now covers 12 city blocks with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":293940,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[32941,2000,35138,57,9,56,63,65,64,103,58,28361,82],"class_list":["post-293939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-homeless-encampments","tag-homelessness","tag-intrepid-museum","tag-metro","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-nypd","tag-us-news","tag-west-side","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293939\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/293940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}