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Mamdani administration restarts homeless encampment sweeps at 11 NYC sites
By
Karen Yi
Published Mar 11, 2026
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Karen Yi / Gothamist
By
Karen Yi
Published Mar 11, 2026
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The Mamdani administration restarted sweeps of homeless encampments on Wednesday — a policy the mayor once vowed to end and that homeless advocates have criticized as cruel and ineffective.
A City Hall spokesperson said most of the 11 encampments that were cleared were already abandoned structures inside parks, where people were no longer residing.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani has said his approach will be kinder and markedly different from those of his predecessors. He said the Department of Homeless Services would decide which sites to target and when — a departure from previous Mayor Eric Adams, who put the NYPD in charge.
He said people living in encampments would be notified seven days before a scheduled sweep and outreach workers would visit the site daily to offer services. Operations were temporarily paused because of the blizzard.
A spokesperson for the advocacy group, the Safety Net Project, said the city had issued more than 70 notices in the last week. City Hall didn’t immediately provide the number of people living in encampments who were given notices and accepted shelter.
Mamdani has faced pressure from business leaders and some city councilmembers to address makeshift encampments and tents in public spaces. New Yorkers are also reporting more encampments.
A report by the New York state comptroller released Wednesday showed the city averaged about 4,000 311 calls a month last year related to encampments — a 12% increase from 2024.
But advocates for homeless people remained critical.
“This is not a new day. This is not a new solution. This is old. Same thing that we've been seeing for all past administrations,” said Eduardo Ventura, who is formerly homeless and is a member of the Safety Net Activists, a group advocating on issues that they’ve experienced.
The Adams administration conducted more than 4,100 sweeps between January 2024 and June 2025, and none of the people targeted in those operations moved into permanent housing. About 260 people agreed to move to a shelter, a Gothamist analysis found.
Ventura and other members of the Safety Net Activists gathered outside City Hall on Wednesday, calling on the mayor to “stop the sweeps.”
They posted their own version of a sweeps notice that included a list of solutions to homelessness. Those included offering more Safe Haven shelter beds without curfews, offering private rooms, improving shelter conditions and offering trash pickup or other services to people living on the streets to meet their basic needs.
“People are scared to death when they come to these shelters,” said Marcus Moore, 54, who also used to be homeless.
The Mamdani administration is moving to create more viable options for people living on the streets who don’t want to go into congregate shelter settings.
The city opened 300 additional Safe Haven beds without curfews and placed 1,400 street homeless New Yorkers in shelters or Safe Havens during the first few months of winter. It also announced that it’s closing the massive Bellevue men’s shelter in Midtown, which amassed complaints of violence and poor conditions for years.
City officials said new shelters that were delayed by the Adams administration will open over the next six months.
Erin Dalton, who took over as commissioner for the Department of Social Services this week, said her approach to encampment sweeps was to look at them as “focused housing efforts.”
“ On your best day, everyone's taking those offers and there's nobody there. And so then you're just doing the cleanup of things that were left behind,” Dalton said during the city’s annual count of street homeless individuals on Tuesday night.
Dalton, who previously led the human services agency in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, was credited with reducing that county’s homeless encampments by 80% during her tenure.
“If we focus our efforts on helping to bring them inside in ways that support them with dignity, respect their preferences for shelter and housing, I think we can see results,” she said.
Tagged
Politics
homelessness
new york city
Karen Yi
Karen Yi covers homelessness and poverty. She joined the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom in 2020. Before that, Karen covered Newark for the Star-Ledger and spent almost a decade working for newspapers in New Jersey and Florida. She grew up in Miami and has a dog named Cashew. Got a tip? Email [email protected] or Signal 917-589-1460.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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