New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani on Thursday said his administration will halt all homeless encampment sweeps across the city once he takes office in January, ending a key policy of his predecessor Eric Adams administration. Speaking at a Manhattan press conference, the Democratic socialist argued that the current strategy fails to connect unhoused New Yorkers to long-term housing, reported the New York Post.
“If you are not connecting homeless New Yorkers to the housing that they so desperately need, then you cannot deem anything you’re doing to be a success,” he said.Mamdani said his approach would focus on linking people to supportive or rental housing, adding that homelessness in the city is “more often a reflection of a political choice being made.” He did not offer specifics on how he plans to address widespread complaints about encampments. According to 311 data, the city logged more than 45,000 encampment-related complaints in the first 11 months of 2025.Clearing tent settlements has been a priority under mayor Eric Adams, who in March 2022 said, “We cannot tolerate these makeshift, unsafe houses on the side of highways, in trees, in front of schools, in parks.” However, a subsequent audit by city comptroller Brad Lander found that roughly 95 per cent of people removed from encampments returned to the streets shortly after the sweeps. City Hall pushed back on the audit, calling the earlier initiative “indisputably successful.” Spokesperson Fabien Levy said, “Cherry-picking numbers and sharing them out of context paint a disingenuous picture as these cleanups have actually connected more than 500 New Yorkers to safe, stable housing.” Levy also noted that New York City “continues to have the lowest rate of unsheltered homelessness of any major city in the nation.”
