NYC mayor-elect Mamdani to end homeless encampment sweeps in January

New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani said Thursday that he will stop clearing homeless encampments when he takes office in January, ending a long-standing practice by Mayor Eric Adams’ administration.

Mamdani confirmed while answering questions at the “Hot Chocolate, Frozen Rent” event in Manhattan that he would stop sweeping homeless encampments in the city, marking one of the clearest breaks to date from the policy Adams introduced in 2022.

“If you’re not connecting homeless New Yorkers with the housing they desperately need, you can’t consider anything you do to be successful,” Mamdani said. he said.

The mayor-elect said his administration’s focus will be on securing long-term housing solutions “whether it’s supportive housing, whether it’s rental housing, whether it’s housing type.”

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Mamdani added that homelessness is often treated “as if it were a natural part of living in the city,” which he believes reflects “a political choice that has been made over and over again.”

New York City Comptroller Brad Lander released a 2023 audit of the NYC Department of Homeless Services’ role in the Adams administration’s sweep of homeless encampments between March and November 2022, finding that the initiative “completely failed” to connect homeless New Yorkers to services.

“The evidence is clear: homeless sweeps have failed on every count,” New York City Comptroller Brad Lander said in his audit report.

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Mayor Eric Adams is seen in Manhattan on Monday, January 15, 2024. (Luiz C. Ribeiro/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

The audit noted that 2,308 people were present during the city cleanup and only 119 people accepted temporary housing. A follow-up review found that homeless activity had returned in nearly one-third of cleared encampments.

In August, the Adams administration said it had placed more than 3,500 previously unhoused New Yorkers into permanent housing.

City officials received more than 45,000 complaints about the camps in 2025, according to data reviewed by the New York Post.

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A homeless person sits with his belongings, Ded. 27, 2024, in a subway car in New York. (Robert Nickelsberg)

Mamdani’s comments were the latest rift with the outgoing mayor, who signed two executive orders on Wednesday aimed at combating antisemitism and preventing city funds from supporting the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement that Mamdani supports.

Fox News Digital has reached out to Mayor Adams’ office for comment.