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311 calls about homeless encampments have been routed to the Department of Homeless Services, instead of the NYPD, for the past two weeks.
New York City is changing who responds to reports of homeless encampments, in a move some homeless advocates hope will make the city’s process for clearing public spaces—also known as “sweeps”—less traumatic.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has been critical of homeless encampment sweeps, where agents of the city clear homeless people’s belongings from sidewalks or other public sites. But facing a brutally cold winter, the administration rolled out a policy earlier this year that modified, but did not stop sweeps, instead giving people a week’s notice before they take place.
Now the administration is putting outreach teams from the Department of Homeless Services (DHS) in charge of the response, rather than the police department.
Since Sept. 22, 311 complaints about homeless encampments have been routed to DHS, rather than NYPD, the agencies said.
Advocates for the homeless have called on the administration to stop encampment sweeps altogether. They said the move to have homeless outreach staff as first responders, rather than police, is a step in the right direction.
“Every New Yorker can see that policing has not been an effective way to address homelessness and the mental health and substance use crises tangled up with it,” said Adolfo Abreu, housing campaigns director at VOCAL-NY in a statement.
Street homeless New Yorkers, who are more likely to be single adults, choose to avoid shelter for various reasons, including safety concerns, poor conditions, or because the often large congregate settings offer little privacy.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani has tacked to the middle on some policing issues in his first months in office. He kept the more moderate NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch in charge and reneged on his promise to stop sweeps altogether.
He’s faced criticism from activists who feel he has not followed through on his pledges to reform the police force, including creating a “Department of Community Safety” that that he said would respond to issues like mental health crises on the street (he did create a new Mayor’s Office of Public Safety that oversees some public safety initiatives).
In changing the city’s encampment response, the mayor has taken one thing off NYPD’s plate and given it to social workers.
“It signals how much this is a social service issue and less a public safety issue,” said Elizabeth Glazer, director of the policy and research journal Vital City.
In the first two weeks since the change took effect Sept. 22, the DHS said it had received roughly 1,500 encampment reports and responded to the callers within four and a half hours on average. The New York Post first reported the change, saying that in the past year the large majority of encampment calls were handled by police.
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeless Services said the new approach was “working well.”
“Having police handle this step did not expedite our encampment response, and this change does not hinder the process in any way,” said Nicholas Jacobelli, a spokesperson for the agency in a statement.
Though continuing to clear encampments, the administration promised DHS would do seven days of outreach before conducting a sweep, to try and get people to accept a placement in a shelter. NYPD and the Department of Sanitation will still assist with encampment sweeps on day seven if the site includes a built structure in an area not designed for habitation, the city said.
“Encampment conditions are being addressed on the same timeline, but under this new policy, there is less trauma and fewer negative interactions. This is the work homeless services should be doing, and it’s one more piece of the puzzle we’re now doing well,” said the agency in a statement to City Limits.
The NYPD and DHS said that outreach workers will request NYPD assistance when there are safety concerns. “Any crime, traffic condition, or public safety issue will continue to be directed to the NYPD via 911,” the police department said in a statement.
Another benefit of having DHS lead could be better coordination, Glazer said. The Department of Homeless Services knows the resources and assistance available to homeless people. “It’s such a hydra-headed issue, and it is so complicated that all those strands need to come together,” she said.
Outreach efforts under previous regimes, which did not always include a seven day waiting period, were often fruitless. Street homeless New Yorkers sometimes get temporary shelter, but rarely permanent housing, according to reports from the Department of Social Services. Earlier this week, New York Focus reported that in sweeps conducted this year, homeless New Yorkers still said their belongings were thrown away, despite the city’s obligations to retain and store personal items.
“If you do nothing in those seven days and then you just go in and ‘sweep,’ that’s whack-a-mole. But if you use those seven days to try and figure out what kind of housing is suited to each person that they’ll accept—that’s a very different approach,” said Glazer.
Whether or not that approach is working remains to be seen. The administration has not released required reports on homeless encampment sweeps and their outcomes since Mamdani took office in January.
“We’re hopeful that one of the first responders to homeless New Yorkers in need will be the Department of Social Services and the Department of Homeless Services. However, to make this new process work, homeless New Yorkers must be connected on the spot to tangible housing, services, and care,” said VOCAL-NY in a statement.
Calibrating the available services to each individual’s needs may help. So might increasing access to housing options like permanent supportive housing and other health and mental health care.
“Are we doing the best that we can in making the offers, or is there something better to be done?” asked Glazer.
Here’s what else happened this week—
ICYMI, from City Limits:
- A recent change to how the city approves CityFHEPS vouchers, aimed at saving money on rent, required additional review by state and city agencies—extending an already-protracted application process that sometimes causes shelter residents to lose out on apartments.
- A program that provided additional support to domestic violence survivors with housing vouchers helped them stay stably housed, among other benefits, a recent evaluation found, what advocates say demonstrates the need for more consistent “aftercare” services for impacted people.
- As colder weather returns, the city is overhauling how it responds to tenants’ heat complaints—attempting to inspect every apartment that files ones.
ICYMI, from other local newsrooms:
- More Bronx homeowners are facing foreclosure, and the city is trying to help, Gothamist reports.
- Thousands of property owners are applying for exemptions to the city’s new tax on luxury second homes, according to The City Reporter.
- Local lawmakers are raising questions about conditions in a veterans homeless shelter in Long Island City, the Daily News reports.
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