Sweeping changes: Some tweaks could improve street homeless sweeps
When Mayor Adams says that there is no dignity in living on the street, we wholeheartedly agree. New Yorkers who are homeless for financial, mental or physical health, substance abuse or other reasons should be met with assistance and a chance to get back on their feet, not passive acceptance of second-class existence.
That is the justification for the mayor’s worthwhile sweeps of street encampments, which prevent folks from permanently setting up on sidewalks, in parks and in vacant lots. The operation, headed by the Departments of Sanitation and Social Services and supplemented by NYPD, gives people a day to clear out their encampments and is then supposed to remove unsanitary possessions, while guiding them toward shelter and services that can turn their lives around.
It’s of serious concern, then, that only 39 people out of 264 encountered accepted the city’s offers of help between the initiative’s launch on March 18 and the start of May. Some of that may have to do with a hard-to-remedy resistance among this particular population. But 39 out of 264 encounters is a batting average far below subway outreach, in which people have been successfully steered to services more than 700 times. Why?
Adams should take care to ensure that those doing the sweeps aren’t harming the goal of building trust by taking a heavy-handed approach to personal belongings. In late March, the mayor said: “If something simple as they have a bag full of bottles that they collect it and they getting five cents each from them, we’re not going to discard that...That’s their property.” All outreach workers must live by those words. Meantime, Adams should press hard to open as many Safe Haven shelter beds as possible as quickly as possible, so people wary of traditional shelters have a place to go.
Nor should we have to be citing incomplete numbers from weeks ago. The administration, which aspires to have its policies driven by data, should make updated indicators on the sweeps public. More transparency will mean more accountability, and better results.
