{"id":346906,"date":"2026-09-15T01:00:16","date_gmt":"2026-09-15T01:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/346906\/"},"modified":"2026-09-15T01:00:16","modified_gmt":"2026-09-15T01:00:16","slug":"new-homeless-encampment-turns-nycs-east-side-into-trash-heap-whole-lot-of-headaches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/346906\/","title":{"rendered":"New homeless encampment turns NYC’s East Side into trash heap: ‘Whole lot of headaches’"},"content":{"rendered":"

The homeless encampment Whac-a-Mole continues.<\/p>\n

The city cleaned out a filthy East Side homeless encampment under the FDR Drive Monday, leaving behind a stomach-turning mess \u2014 while locals said the vagrants will likely come back anyway. <\/p>\n

\u201c[The encampment] could start again as soon as, like, the end of the day,\u201d Dina Elkan, senior director of events at Solar One, told The Post. \u201cIt\u2019s not just about over here. They have to check all the way down to make sure that people haven\u2019t just relocated.\u201d<\/p>\n

A homeless encampment is seen near the BP gas station on the 23rd Street FDR Drive underpass. Lone Pine Press for NY Post<\/p>\n

The scene resembled a garbage dump on Monday, with luggage, chairs, coolers and piles of trash strewn about under the FDR near 23rd Street \u2014 and it\u2019s been going on for weeks.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt looks like their living room and everything is over there,\u201d complained Matthew Condah, who works at a nearby BP gas station. \u201cThat\u2019s where they sleep. And they come over here for water and stuff. They walk around all the time causing a whole lot of headaches over here. <\/p>\n

\u201cBut for the past two weeks, they\u2019ve always been there,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

The Big Apple has been plagued by unsightly shantytowns in recent months, including a blocks-long row of tents and shelters that wreaked havoc on the West Side near the Intrepid Museum<\/a>, with sidewalk squatters stealing city electricity<\/a> and peddling drugs and sex.<\/p>\n

A homeless encampment is seen near the BP gas station on the 23rd Street FDR Drive underpass. Lone Pine Press for NY Post<\/p>\n

A homeless encampment is seen near the BP gas station at the 23rd Street FDR Drive underpass. Lone Pine Press for NY Post<\/p>\n

In February, The Post exposed an illegal encampment in Queens<\/a>, with rows of mobile homes and trailers under the Whitestone Expressway in Queens in the shadow of City Field. <\/p>\n

Now, another batch of homeless vagrants have set up shop on Manhattan\u2019s East Side. <\/p>\n

\u201cFrom 23rd to 18th, they will come and do a cleanup. Let\u2019s say they\u2019ll clean this part. By the time that cleaning is done, they would have already set up shop on 18th and have started a whole new encampment,\u201d Solar One worker Liz Parades told The Post. \u201cSo, it happens instantly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ridding neighborhoods of the disheveled shantytowns is hampered by City Hall. <\/p>\n

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s encampment policy takes cops out of the picture and takes a week. Paul Martinka for NY Post<\/p>\n

Remnants of a homeless encampment are seen near East 23rd Street underneath the FDR in Manhattan. Lone Pine Press<\/p>\n

Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s approach to the encampments calls for the NYPD to be shut out when a new site is reported \u2014 with city outreach workers instead given a week to coax vagrants off the streets.<\/p>\n

Only then are sanitation workers and cops allowed to clear out the encampments \u2014 a process that has typically just forced the vagrants to relocate and return when the police are gone. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe cadence is this,\u201d Elkan said. \u201cYou set up your encampment, somebody needs to report it, somebody needs to respond to that report. Then there\u2019s a seven-day warning period during which you can figure out where you\u2019re gonna shift to.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn fact, to the point, we\u2019re trying to get them to understand this entire area should constitute a zone,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s not just about over here. They have to check all the way down to make sure that people haven\u2019t just relocated.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The homeless encampment Whac-a-Mole continues. The city cleaned out a filthy East Side homeless encampment under the FDR…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":346907,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[109467,32941,2000,75,57,9,56,63,65,64,58,82],"class_list":["post-346906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-fdr-drive","tag-homeless-encampments","tag-homelessness","tag-manhattan","tag-metro","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-us-news","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346906","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=346906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346906\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/346907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}