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It comes less than 48 hours after we witnessed crews clearing out homeless encampments under the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.
It was the beginning of a two-week blitz to remove up to 150 encampments across the five boroughs.
The effort involves teams of people – including social service workers, police, sanitation and parks employees – engaging with, and offering services to, people who find themselves homeless.
ALSO READ | Homeless taking over Bronx apartment building stairwell
That includes going to a shelter, which many do not want to do for fear of violence and lack of privacy.
And there is another option: safe haven beds like those in the Bronx, which are separate from the shelter system.
The mayor says the status quo will simply not work.
ALSO READ | NYPD launching quality-of-life initiative; critics fear return to ‘broken windows’
“I cannot say this loud and clear enough,” said Adams. “People are not going to live under an undignified environment in the city where I’m the mayor. We will do better, and we have to do better.”
“Too long we have treated these New Yorkers as unseen,” the mayor continued. “We’re not going to allow that to continue to happen. We’re not going to abandon homeless people in our city. We’re going to give them the support, the housing and the healing that they deserve.”
The city also has roughly 2500 apartments set aside for the homeless, apartments that have been left empty.
That is due to a bureaucratic mess the mayor says he was not even aware of until it was reported by the NY Post.
ALSO READ | New York City begins removing homeless encampments
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Source: This post first appeared on abc7NY
