Adams’ NYC homeless encampment sweeps only landed 3 people housing — out of more than 2,000: audit
Just three of the more than 2,000 people swept up in the Adams administration’s homeless encampment crackdown landed in permanent housing — and nearly 95% didn’t even go to a shelter, according to a scathing new audit.
The damning review, released Wednesday by the office of New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, describes the controversial policy as a failure, finding that about a third of the homeless encampment sites popped back up after being cleaned up by municipal workers.
“The evidence is clear: by every measure, the homeless sweeps failed,” Lander said in a statement.
The sweeps have been a cornerstone of Mayor Eric Adams’ plan to address the Big Apple’s decades-old homelessness problem, and his administration has defended the initiative including by downplaying conditions in the city’s troubled shelter system, and pushing to add more beds.
But the audit by Lander’s office found that of the 2,308 homeless people present during sweeps between March 21, 2022, and November 30, 2022, only 119 — or 5% — even agreed to go to a shelter.
Of those, 90 stayed for at least a day, according to the audit. Only 43 of those people were still in a shelter as of January 23 when the Department of Homeless Services checked back in on them.
Just three people were placed in permanent housing, the comptroller’s office said.
The audit also found that 31% of the 99 encampments cleared by the city had already been rebuilt in some way by April 12.
DHS says it spent about $61.4 million on all of its street outreach efforts in 2022, but the exact amount it shelled out on the sweeps was not identified, the comptroller’s office said. The department’s allotted budget for the 2022 fiscal year was $2.8 billion.
Lander called on the mayor to end the policy and invest further in “safe haven” shelters,” which are less restrictive than traditional shelters and have a “low-barrier” admission process. He also said the administration should expand the City Housing First program, which helps fast-track the process of getting homeless people with mental illness into supportive housing units.
The comptroller, however, did not put a dollar amount on his proposed solutions for the homelessness issue.
His audit comes days before the unveiling of next year’s city budget — which is expected to cut shelter funding by nearly 20%.
The overall budget for city shelters is expected to drop from $2.7 billion in 2023 to $2.2 billion in 2024, according to NYC Independent Budget Office. The allotment for “safe haven” services, however, will remain roughly the same for the 2024 fiscal year, at just under $133 million.
City Council minority leader Joe Borelli (R-Staten Island) said he’d support increased funding for DHS, which initiates the sweeps along with NYPD, if they proved to be a success.
“I’m fine with the dollar amount but I’m more concerned with the failure rate if it was working it would be money well spent,” he said.
Councilwoman Diana Ayala (D-Manhattan/Bronx), who chairs the general welfare committee, said the audit came as no surprise.
“We’re not addressing the reason they refuse to be in shelters to begin with,” Ayala said. “You can move them, you can disrupt, you can try whatever tactic you like, but the result is going to be the same.”
In a statement, City Hall spokesman Fabien Levy claimed that, “Despite the inherent difficulty of this work, our efforts have been indisputably successful.”
Additional reporting by Bernadette Hogan and Rthvika Suvarna
