Mayor Zohran Mamdani conceded Wednesday that the Big Apple does, in fact, need homeless encampment sweeps — but vowed that his administration will have “better outcomes.”
Hizzoner told reporters during an unrelated press conference in Harlem that he believed the Adams administration policy was a “failure” because it connected too few homeless people with services.
“I made a decision with my team to put a pause on that prior administration’s policy as we started to develop our own policy that would generate far better outcomes for the city,” Mamdani said, adding his admin couldn’t roll out the new policy until the city warmed up.
The mayor touted the new policy, which was first reported by The Post Tuesday night, as adding multiple attempts to get the person off the street before tearing down their makeshift living structures.
“So, whereas previously, a homeless New Yorker might have only two points of interaction with city government, the first day there served a notice, and the seventh day when that notice comes to an end, our administration will meet those homeless New Yorkers every single day,” the mayor said.
Mamdani said DHS will also be the point on the sweeps, which he claimed to be new — but that was always how the sweeps worked under prior administrations.
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The added interactions will stretch the overworked DHS, with just over 2,000 employees, even thinner.
City Hall told The Post previously that the massive preliminary $127 billion budget would add 60 outreach workers.
The city did not set a benchmark for success with the amended policy.