Homeless New Yorkers and advocates say clearing encampments often only moves people instead of helping them.<\/p>\n
What You Need To Know<\/p>\n
The debate was playing out along the busy West Side Highway, where a small encampment sits across from the Intrepid
\n
The city says outreach now happens for seven days before a noticed encampment is cleared
\n
More than 100 healthcare professionals and organizations also signed a letter to the administration arguing sweeps can disrupt care and scatter support systems people rely on<\/p>\n
\u201cAs I was getting cleaned up, I wasn\u2019t getting help,\u201d formerly homeless New Yorker Eduardo Ventura said.<\/p>\n
Ventura says he experienced multiple sweeps before eventually getting an apartment.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just come back because this is a safe place that we created,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
That debate was playing out along the busy West Side Highway, where a small encampment sits across from the Intrepid.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re hearing this administration say that they want to pursue actual solutions, that they want people to be housed off the street, they want people to get the care that they need from the street,\u201d Helen Strom from the Safety Net Project said.<\/p>\n
The city says outreach now happens for seven days before a noticed encampment is cleared.<\/p>\n
More than 100 healthcare professionals and organizations also signed a letter to the administration arguing sweeps can disrupt care and scatter support systems people rely on.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen a sweep happens, all that gets dispersed, all that goes away,\u201d Marc Shi with Health Justice for New York said.<\/p>\n
At Washington Square Park on Thursday, advocates tried to model the approach they want instead by passing out toiletries and other supplies before doing outreach themselves.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need a new approach to outreach, and you\u2019re seeing it happening to today,\u201d formerly homeless New Yorker Marcus Moore said.<\/p>\n
The rally comes the same day the state comptroller released reported overall homelessness in the city fell more than 10% between January 2024 and January 2025.<\/p>\n
NY1 reached out to the Mamdani administration multiple times to respond to the criticism raised by advocates and has not heard back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Homeless New Yorkers and advocates say clearing encampments often only moves people instead of helping them. What You…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":304420,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[25,388,75,84,83,9,24,12,63,27],"class_list":["post-304431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-app-top-stories","tag-louis-finley","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-news","tag-nyc","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304431","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=304431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304431\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/304420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}