NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani pressed for answers on growing West Side homeless encampment
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani was pressed for answers Monday as a growing number of homeless men and women live on the sidewalks on Manhattan's West Side.
The Mamdani administration has been accused of being too slow to respond to the homeless encampment that's been growing between the Intrepid Museum and Javits Center.
West Side homeless encampment
At the bustling encampment on West 45th Street at 11th Avenue, people shave with water from a hydrant and use strips of plastic and cardboard to find shade.
The scenes are similar one block away on West 46th Street and all the way down to West 34th.
A woman who lives in an apartment nearby said the homeless population there keeps getting larger.
"Some of them are very nice and very polite, they get out of the way. Some of them, crazy, you know, yelling and screaming and throwing things," she told CBS News New York.
"It's definitely not ideal," said Ryan Hill, a tourist. "I just generally feel helpless because as an individual, I don't know what to do to solve this problem."
Mamdani responds to criticism
When asked what City Hall is doing about the issue, Mamdani said the focus is not on forcing people to clear out. He said it's on getting them into stable housing.
"We are focused on connecting New Yorkers to shelter and on establishing a pipeline to stable housing, not just moving New Yorkers from one place to another place," he said. "To this specific encampment, we're gonna look into that."
The mayor had the Department of Homeless Services take over homeless encampment sweeps from the NYPD in February. Each job now starts with seven days of outreach before an encampment is cleared.
A man who identified himself as someone who has been homeless for three years said the scorching weather this week will force him into Penn Station or Bellevue Hospital, but he will end up back on the streets.
He said a long-term solution does not feel forthcoming, no matter what the mayor says.
