The Intrepid Museum, housed in a decommissioned aircraft carrier moored along Manhattan’s West Side, has been a popular destination for local families. This summer, as homeless encampments and drug use proliferated along streets nearby, some parents crossed the museum off their activity list.
New York, like other big cities, has been dealing with a sharp rise in homelessness in recent years that has bedeviled a series of mayors. Now the issue is in Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s hands, and community and business leaders say his early efforts haven’t done enough to address the problem.
Mamdani campaigned on making the city more affordable and since has introduced a plan to build 200,000 new housing units over the next decade, which might help ameliorate the homelessness problem longer term. He worries that a family living in his building, who have complained about the encampments that they can see from their apartment, won’t renew their lease. Residents and businesses say the approach allows individuals to, in effect, evade removal by telegraphing that if they relocate across the street on the sixth day then the seven-day clock will restart. “I’m going to be blunt: This policy is insane. Separately, the Mamdani administration has implemented a new system to better track encampments and coordinate responses. It also is expanding programs that give priority to unsheltered individuals for immediate placement into housing. But community leaders have grown impatient with the Democratic socialist mayor for not providing a comprehensive strategy to combat homelessness now. He added that a deli that leases storefront space from him recently received a summons from the city for garbage left on the sidewalk by people who live in a nearby encampment and congregate outside the business.
It does not help the very people it’s saying it’s helping,” said Delores Rubin, a Hell’s Kitchen resident and president of a group that acts as a community liaison to the local New York Police Department precinct. “Through meaningful street outreach, stabilization options and supportive housing, the Mamdani administration will help New Yorkers rebuild their lives with the dignity, care and stability they deserve,” a mayoral spokesperson said. The simplest solution is to build more affordable housing, Giffen said. The Mamdani housing plan focuses on building homes for working-class New Yorkers, he said, but it doesn’t do enough for the lowest-income bracket.
