Mayor Eric Adams panned Mayor-Elect Mamdani’s plans to end police sweeps of homeless camps as “idealism colliding with realism” – and said the young upstart was going to have to get serious about governing soon.
“I appreciate the idealistic view he has of life because you need that as a mayor,” Adams told ABC7 in a Sunday interview at Gracie Mansion.
“But the realism is — imagine if we said that you are allowed to sleep on the streets of our city in tents and encampments with 230,000 people coming to our city,” he said. “You know what that would look like? All you have to do is go look at other cities that are having that take place.”
Those comments come days after Mamdani vowed to completely end all police sweeps of homeless encampments across the city, reversing a major initiative of the Adams administration.
Mamdani said the sweeps would be halted if no stable housing was provided after kicking the homeless from their tents – as was largely the case during Adams administration.
A 2023 audit of Adams’ sweeping efforts found that 95% of the people kicked out of camps ended up back on the streets.
But Hizzoner doubled down on his stance, saying it was more humane than letting the homeless fester in dangerous encampments.
“We stated it was inhumane for people to live on the streets, human waste, drug paraphernalia, schizophrenic, bipolar, living on our subways, living in our streets,” said Adams, who will leave office at the end of the month. “We said, no, you deserve to be inside. We care.
“Now, if he’s stating he’s no longer going to implement a smart policy on our part, New Yorkers are going to see the repercussions of that,” he added.
Sprawling encampments have run rampant in neighborhoods in cities including Los Angeles and devolved into dens of rampant and dangerous drug use.
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