New York City has seen homeless encampments springing up across the city leading to a huge spike in complaints from residents living in some of Manhattan’s wealthiest neighborhoods.
The encampments have reportedly been popping up across all of New York City’s five boroughs, with residents in areas including Chelsea, Upper West Side, Hells Kitchen, Bushwick and in the East Village making complaints.
Pictures from Manhattan have shown encampments set up on sidewalks, and rows of items belonging to the homeless on some of the city’s busiest streets, as many are reluctant to return to shelters.
According to Spectrum News NY1, in May 2019, 3-1-1 received 371 complaints about homeless people on the streets in New York City. A year later in May 2020, that number has risen to 1,828.
June and July 2020 saw a similar yearly increase, with 1,581 and over 2,000 respectively, when compared with 532 and 730 from 2019 – an increase of over 230 per cent in the three months.
After the high volume of complaints, city officials have begun to address the issue.
Over the last five months, thousands of homeless people were moved out of shelters and into Manhattan hotels, but complaints of encampments springing up in some of the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods, City Mayor Bill de Blasio has announced that the 13,000 homeless sent back to shelters.
Meanwhile, situation teams have reportedly been on the streets of Chelsea the clear some of the items that have been accumulating for months.
However, while residents are pleased to see something being done about the camps, others fear that it is a temporary fix, saying that homeless people who lived in the camps have already started to return.
Thousands of people were moved out of homeless shelters and into hotels, but despite the initiative, homeless encampments have been springing up across the city. Pictured: Homeless people setup encampments on Clarkson and Washington Street in lower Manhattan
Ramshackle encampments have popped up all over the city including here at Broadway and Franklin Street in Tribeca. Now, city mayor Bill de Blasio has promised to get homeless people back into shelters
New York authorities are to begin the process of moving homeless people who are currently staying in hotels back to shelters, but some are calling for more long-term solutions to the city’s homeless crisis.
To add to the problem, the NYPD’s Homeless Outreach unit – a group that worked with social services to help get the homeless off the streets and into shelters – was disbanded by the city in July, with the officers being merged into other units to help with rising crime rates.
As a result, according to NY1, while complaints about homelessness have risen, the number of homeless encampments being dismantled has decreased.
Figures released in May 2020 show that in recent years, New York City has reached the highest levels of homelessness since the Great Depression, with almost 60,000 homeless people living in the city, and in 2019, over 130,000 men, women and children slept in the New York City municipal shelter system.
However, with many of the shelters either closed or running at a reduced capacity due to the coronavirus crisis amid fears of the virus spreading through the shelter system, many of the city’s homeless were forced out on to the streets.
The backtrack by De Blasio to move the homeless back into shelters comes after complaints over issues of ‘quality of life’ from those living in the neighborhoods affected. Pictures, a homeless man on 14th Street in Manhattan
Despite city mayor Bill de Blazio’s and the Department of Homeless Services’ (DHS) initiative housing around 13,000 homeless people in a number of Manhattan’s hotels, homeless encampments have still sprung up around the city, with many calling for better long-term solutions.
In July, it emerged that 139 of the city’s hotels – which had been forced closed for months – had agreed to take in homeless people for $175 per person, per night as part of a scheme by the city to try to avoid a breakout of COVID-19 in homeless shelters.
But the initiative is costing some $2 million a night to house around 13,000 people (although the city will try to claim some of this back from FEMA), and outraging local residents in areas such as Chelsea and the Upper West Side who have said the streets have become more dangerous.
Although no specific timeline to move the homeless back into shelters was given, Mayor Bill de Blasio said that the city would start the process immediately, starting with those who are most vulnerable
New York’s homeless community on Fifth Avenue have used furniture and junk abandoned by wealthy people fleeing the city during the pandemic to build a sidewalk camp
Some displaced people have been seen doing drugs, urinating and cat calling in the streets – which are free from tourists with a widespread travel ban due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
The rise in crime in the city since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic has also been attributed to the homeless crisis by some residents. The mayor has previously blamed the rise on the coronavirus pandemic and authorities have blamed it on the release of people from jail to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.
But pressure from residents has led to Mayor Bill de Blasio making a U-turn when it comes to the fate of the city’s homeless and will now move thousands back into shelters.
De Blasio has said the process will begin immediately although the mayor did not provide an end date by which time all of New York’s homeless would be out of city hotels and off the streets.
A homeless encampment along Broadway and Franklin Street in lower Manhattan sits abandoned as the city grapples with numerous make shift shelters popping up over recent weeks
A homeless person is pictures wandering the streets in Midtown Manhattan over the weekend. The mayor stressed that in order for the homeless to be moved out of hotels, the city would need to ensure that there is enough safe space in existing shelters
De Blasio’s promise comes amid rising tensions of various ‘quality of life’ issues from residents living close to the hotels-turned-homeless shelters.
‘As the health situation continues to improve, we’re going to start the process of figuring out where we can get homeless individuals back into safe shelter facilities and reduce the reliance on hotels,’ de Blasio said at a press conference.
‘Hotels are certainly not where we want to be in general, and we’re going to start that process immediately.
‘On the specific quality-of-life issues, it’s incumbent upon every city agency involved to get out there and solve them,’ de Blasio said, referring to the NYPD, DHS, and the Health and Sanitation departments.
The mayor said that the city would ‘make sure we can start to get people out of those hotels, relieve some of the pressure on those communities, but do it in a way that’s really safe for everyone involved, starting with those who are homeless.’
Pictured: A homeless person sets up an encampment on West 4th and 6th Avenue in lower Manhattan on Monday
Pictured: A homeless person sleeps on the sidewalk outside of a Starbucks on 8th Ave and 35th Street in Manhattan, Monday
Thousands of homeless people ended up being moved into hotel rooms after fears Covid-19 was spreading fast inside crowded city shelters, and now a number of encampments have arisen in all parts of the city including Lower Manhattan
‘I’ve instructed all of them to address these issues as they come up and make sure that neighborhood residents see that these concerns are being addressed,’ de Blasio noted.
The mayor stressed that in order for the homeless to be moved out of hotels, the city would need to ensure that there is enough safe space in existing shelters.
‘We’ll have more to say on that as the plans are more deeply developed and as we see what the health situation shows us,’ he added.
One homeless couple – Ladiee Warner and her husband – told the NY1 outlet that they are not interested in going back to a shelter.
A woman who is part of New York’s homeless community, pictured in the East Village
All kinds of furniture including sofas, office chairs and even fridges can be found out on the the streets in homeless camps
A woman is seen begging for money on the unusually quiet streets of Manhattan. The complaints about the rising homeless numbers have led to a U-turn by the mayor who had earlier suggested that those who were homeless could remain in hotel rooms until Covid-19 vaccine had been produced
‘The shelters I have been in, they are nasty, the staff is rude,’ Warner said. ‘People are fighting. People getting stabbed. It’s dangerous things going on they don’t take serious. It’s safer on the streets than inside of there.’
Toni Hays, who with her family set up camp near Penn Station along one of the busiest streets in Manhattan, said: ‘We move from this spot to back in front of the post office. Back and forth.
‘The cops, they move us back and forth. The cops move us around a lot, because there is nowhere to sit really. Right now it’s hard to get something on our own, because the rent is so expensive.’
More progressive politicians are calling on the mayor and New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo to find long-term humanitarian solutions to the city’s homeless problem.
Although the plastic bags may look like trash, they are the belongings of homeless people. Seen here along Fifth Avenue
Mayor de Blasio has moved 13,000 homeless people into hotels across the city to stop COVID-19 outbreaks in shelters but many are still living out on the streets
Putting up the homeless in hotels is costing the city $2million a night and is outraging residents in Manhattan who say it has brought an influx of crime
There have been complaints from locals of urinating, loitering and drug-taking by homeless people on the streets
New York State Sen. Brad Hoylman has backed the state legislature’s ‘Home Stability Support’ bill. The bill, yet to be scheduled for a floor vote, would help New Yorkers facing homelessness to pay rent.
‘This is approaching a humanitarian crisis,’ the Dem said according to the New York Daily News. ‘If we don’t dedicate the resources to the problem, there’s no way out of it.’
Hoylman, whose district runs from Greenwich Village to Hell’s Kitchen, was also critical of Governor Cuomo and de Blasio in their handling of homelessness, saying: ‘Give people a plan and a sense of responsibility and civic duty. That’s what I think is lacking.’
A man is pictured on Saturday, resting on the streets of the Upper West Side where hundreds of people complained
The camp of up to 20 people on West 24th and Sixth Avenue sprung up early in the pandemic. Residents and business owners complained about the mess and chaos and said it harms their livelihoods. A homeless man is pictured on 6th Ave & 22nd St
A homeless man is pictured sitting on a fire hydrant on 8th Avenue in Midtown Manhattan
New York’s homeless community outside Port Authority on 8th Avenue. Residents have complained that crime is on the up but last month, de Blasio stripped the police force of $1billion in response to Black Lives Matter protests
Meanwhile, Councilman Stephen Levin (D-Brooklyn), has called for a range of responses including more transitional housing units known as ‘safe havens’ with ‘wraparound services’ for people with mental health issues and those who struggle with substance abuse.
Levin proposed a bill that would require every homeless person to get their own hotel room, and while an effort to pass the bill failed in May, he still believes it’s a worthy goal.
Council Speaker Corey Johnson, who supported the legislation and whose district includes Chelsea and Hell’s Kitchen, said in a statement: ‘While moving people from unsafe shelters to hotels is the right thing to do because of the pandemic, the city must work to ensure those experiencing homelessness get the services they need and that neighborhood concerns are addressed in a responsible way.
‘There are no easy answers here,’ he added. ‘But the city can and must do more to both protect the most vulnerable and keep our neighborhoods safe.’
Homeless people setup encampments on Clarkson and Washington Street in lower Manhattan
De Blasio said for the city to get homeless people out of hotels, it has to ‘identify space that will work in our existing shelters.’
A notice shows that the city has begun a clean-up process, forcing some people to abandon their encampments