CONTACT: Adolfo Abreu, adolfo@vocal-ny.org

311 AND HOMELESS ENCAMPMENTS: NEW YORKERS WANT AN END TO HOMELESSNESS, NOT QUICK FIXES THAT HIDE THE PROBLEM, BUT FAIL TO ADDRESS IT

To Police or Not Police Isn’t the Most Pressing Question When Housing and Healthcare are so Limited

NEW YORK — In response to reporting yesterday that the Mamdani administration announced a new order removing NYPD from responding to 311 calls reporting encampment sweeps, VOCAL-NY released the following statement, attributable to Adolfo Abreu, Housing Campaigns Director at VOCAL-NY:

“For years, homeless New Yorkers have called out the ineffectiveness of NYPD serving as first responders to homeless encampments. Every New Yorker can see that policing has not been an effective way to address homelessness and the mental health and substance use crises tangled up with it. If it were, we’d long have solved this humanitarian crisis. Instead, we see harmful and destabilizing interventions like tickets and arrests – instead of offers of housing or services – and also see NYPD officers walking or driving by people living, sleeping, or dying on our streets.

The fact is, virtually every street homeless New Yorker has been arrested, spent time on Rikers Island, been taken to an ER, or spent time at a shelter. This is the norm. What is not happening: connecting people to stable housing and healthcare, in particular for mental health and substance use services if needed. 

The Adams administration exacerbated this crisis through mismanagement and escalating police interventions, but the current administration must make this issue a political priority if it hopes to see meaningful improvements. Homeless New Yorkers should be housed!

We’re hopeful that one of the first responders to homeless New Yorkers in need will be the Department of Social Services and the Department of Homeless Services. However, to make this new process work, homeless New Yorkers must be connected on the spot to tangible housing, services, and care.”

Here are some ways the City can continue to strengthen its approach:

• Appoint a Senior official at City Hall to spearhead a response to this issue by bringing relevant City agencies and non-profits together to implement effective solutions. 
• Increase the number of emergency housing units – known as safe havens and stabilization beds – and rapidly move people off the streets and ensure on-site healthcare is provided.
• Rapidly move people from these emergency housing units into the roughly 4,000 currently vacant supportive housing units 
• Improve the process of housing placements and support New Yorkers to receive benefits they are eligible for, like Social Security Disability Insurance
• At the same time, the City should permanently house New Yorkers currently in safe havens and stabilization beds to create capacity and offer more beds for New Yorkers in need. 
• Increase the City’s mental health workforce. We applauded the City’s decision to not increase the NYPD’s headcount. Those resources ($70 million) could be utilized to increase capacity at other City agencies working to address these issues. 
• Invest in and build out the Department of Community Safety to maintain coordination across the relevant city agencies. 

In the forthcoming Homelessness Plan, the Mayor must outline a bold vision and strategy followed by investments with the singular goal of permanently housing homeless New Yorkers on the streets, in shelters, and those doubled/tripled up with family and friends.   

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