More than 2,300 homeless New Yorkers were forcibly removed from the streets in encampments sweeps last year — but just three of them wound up receiving permanent housing afterward, according to an audit that City Comptroller Brad Lander announced Wednesday.
The city’s fiscal watchdog called upon the Adams administration to immediately halt encampments sweeps across the city while announcing the audit’s findings on June 28 at Tompkins Square Park, in the shadow of what was once Anarchy Row — a homeless encampment that became the infamous casualty of the sweeps in April of 2022, seeing the arrest of several unhoused individuals for refusing to pack up and leave their small patch of sidewalk.
Lander charged that the many encampment sweeps which occurred since March 2022, after Mayor Eric Adams ordered such operations to clear the streets and offer assistance to the unhoused, had failed in providing those living on the streets with long-term housing.
The comptroller’s office investigated the city’s Department of Homeless Service and the sweeps that occurred between March and November 2022. While 2,308 people were forcibly removed from encampments, the audit found that only three impacted individuals received permanent housing as a result.
“Despite the fact that the primary goal was to provide these individuals with access to temporary housing and assistance, 2,189 of the 2,308 people, or 95%, did not go into shelter for a single night and there is no record of other services that they received,” Lander said. “99.9% of them remain homeless. That is what we call in the business a policy failure.”
The report also found that as of Jan. 23, 2023, just 43 people of those impacted by the sweeps remain in shelter. Moreover, the audit alleged that the sweeps did not prevent homeless individuals from creating encampments elsewhere.
On April 12, 2023, auditors visited 99 identified locations where the task force swept in 2022 and found that people…
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