Mayor Eric Adams’ controversial homeless encampment sweep program has struggled to move chronically unsheltered individuals directly into transitional housing, according to new figures released by the city.
City agencies swept roughly 2,300 encampments, removing the belongings of 3,500 homeless individuals, in the first nine months of 2024, according to data released by the Department of Homeless Services on Friday. Of those, just 114 people accepted a transitional housing or shelter placement at the time of the sweep, the data showed.
The reports, which were required by city law, offer the first glimpse at the outcomes of Adams’ multiagency sweep program, which the mayor has defended as a way to clean up unsightly and undignified quarters and connect homeless individuals to services. According to opponents of the tactic, the new data shows the ineffectiveness and waste of the ramped-up approach at a time when other outreach and housing programs are underfunded.
“It is unconscionable to spend millions of dollars every year on harassing homeless people while we have to fight tooth and nail to get Street to Home housing programs operational,” said Council Member Sandy Nurse, an East Brooklyn Democrat who co-sponsored the law, referring to a successful 2022 program that moved street homeless individuals into supportive housing. The administration signaled that program would not be expanded this year due to bureaucratic obstacles, the Daily News Reported last month.
The city deployed 10,000 employees, spending approximately $3.5 million, to carry out the sweeps, which often entailed a police detail and sanitation workers to dispose of people’s belongings. The Department of Homeless Services is also on the scene to offer a connection to a contracted outreach provider.
Data on the sweeps, which published Friday afternoon months after a statutory deadline, indicate just 3% of individuals were connected with a bed during the sweep.
The mayor’s office cautioned about drawing conclusions from the data published pursuant to the law.
“The Local Law 34 reporting requirements neither tell the full story nor count when people are connected to shelter before or after an encampment removal,” said Adams’ spokesman William Fowler. Some people may seek services when they receive notice of the sweep, which comes in advance of city agency staff, while others may visit shelter intake hours later, he said. The city did not report data on those service-seekers.
While the Sanitation Department may clear an encampment in a matter of minutes or hours, the Department of Homeless Services’ multiple-touch approach to connecting street homeless individuals with shelter is explicitly designed to allow for several engagements, according to the report.
“When the client is ready, the contracted outreach provider begins the process to get them permanent or supportive housing, which includes applying for housing vouchers or a supportive housing application,” the report states.
City Hall did not directly respond to a question about whether the purpose of the heavy-handed approach was to induce a person to begin the process of getting services.
Fowler said the reported results ignore individuals who were connected to shelters through ongoing engagement after a sweep. Overall, the city has made progress getting people into shelters, he argued, pointing to the high proportion – 97% – of homeless individuals in shelters and a new $650 million allocation for street homelessness, much of which will fund the creation of 900 new low-barrier beds.
